If you've lived in Newport through a few Octobers, you know the week the Audrain Newport Concours & Motor Week rolls into town brings questions about traffic and access.
This year, the details are especially useful to know. The seventh annual Motor Week runs Thursday, October 1 through Sunday, October 4, and the event itself got bigger for 2026, not smaller. Organizers added a brand-new second concours dedicated entirely to supercars and hypercars. But the part of town that actually shuts down for the public got smaller, because the marquee show moved off the mansion lawns and down to Fort Adams. If you live here and just want to know what changes on your block, that's the piece worth understanding before the week starts.
When Bellevue Avenue Closes
Here's the actual footprint: Bellevue Avenue closes to through traffic for two and a half hours, from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., on Saturday, October 3. That's it. That single window covers the Bellevue Avenue Car Display, when cars finishing the Concours Tour d'Elegance park along the closed street for public viewing.
The tour itself starts at 8 a.m. that morning at Second Beach in Middletown, winds through Little Compton, and comes back along Thames Street and Ocean Drive before arriving on Bellevue around 11 a.m. That means a rolling parade on back roads most of the morning, followed by one closed street for one lunch-hour stretch.
Other events include ticketed gatherings at venues such as Rough Point and the Audrain Automobile Museum, as well as events at Fort Adams State Park.
Motor Week At A Glance
| Day | What's Happening | Public or Ticketed | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thu, Oct 1 | 50-Mile Supercar Drive; Hat Luncheon; Wine by the Water; public Supercar Tour along Ocean Drive | Mixed | Rough Point, Forty 1° North, Ocean Drive |
| Fri, Oct 2 | The Gathering; auction preview | Ticketed | Rough Point |
| Sat, Oct 3 | Cars & Coffee (free, 7:30-9:30am); Concours Tour d'Elegance (8-11am); Bellevue Car Display (11am-1:30pm, street closed); Supercar Concours (10am-3pm); Casino Royale Gala | Mostly ticketed, two free windows | Fort Adams, Bellevue Avenue |
| Sun, Oct 4 | Concours d'Elegance, 8:30am-4pm | Ticketed | Fort Adams State Park |
The Village at the International Tennis Hall of Fame on Bellevue Avenue runs as a free public hub throughout the weekend, with concessions from local restaurants and a family zone, regardless of what's happening on the show fields.
Why Fort Adams, Not Bellevue Avenue, Is Where The Crowd Actually Goes This Year
This is the change longtime residents will notice even if they never buy a ticket. In 2025, the Concours d'Elegance itself sat on the lawn at The Breakers. For 2026, it moved to Fort Adams State Park, and the new Supercar Concours launched right alongside it there on Saturday.
That's not a small logistical shuffle. The Breakers sits inside the Bellevue Avenue mansion corridor, surrounded by residential streets with limited capacity. Fort Adams is a state park built for exactly this kind of crowd, with open fields and its own access roads. Moving the biggest single-day draw of the week off Bellevue and down to the point means the heaviest car and pedestrian volume on Sunday never touches the residential blocks most people worry about. More than 180 historically significant automobiles competing for the Willie K. Vanderbilt Trophy, a name that traces back to the first Vanderbilt Cup race run in Newport in 1900, are now judged on a peninsula built to hold that many people, not on a lawn wedged between houses.
So the event added an entire second show for 2026. More cars, more days of programming, a new format nobody in North America had run before. And the residential footprint on Bellevue Avenue shrank to that single Saturday window.
The mansions still show up on the schedule. They just aren't hosting the biggest day anymore.
Two Free Ways to Take in Motor Week
Two events during Motor Week cost nothing and don't require dodging anyone's velvet rope.
Cars & Coffee happens at Fort Adams on Saturday, October 3, from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. Organizers call it the most attended event of the entire week, and it's the one morning where you can walk up, look at genuinely rare cars parked in the open, and leave before your coffee gets cold.
The Village at the International Tennis Hall of Fame is open and free all weekend. It's the closest thing Motor Week has to a town square: local restaurant concessions, vendor booths, and a family zone that runs independent of whatever's happening on the ticketed show fields nearby.
Neither requires planning around the Bellevue closure. Both are worth building a Saturday morning around if you're already in town.
The Businesses You'll See Named All Week
A handful of specific Newport addresses carry the week, and knowing which ones lets you read the calendar instead of guessing at it.
- Rough Point, Doris Duke's former estate on Bellevue Avenue, hosts the Hat Luncheon on Thursday and The Gathering on Friday, a ticketed garden party with rare cars on the lawn.
- Forty 1° North, the marina and hotel on the harbor, hosts Wine by the Water on Thursday afternoon, pairing wine tastings with harbor views.
- Newport Craft Brewery & Distillery hosts Hilltop Hangout sessions during the week, a lower-key, no-blazers-required stop compared to the black-tie events.
- La Forge, the longtime restaurant on Bellevue Avenue, hosts the owner and driver lunch immediately after the Bellevue Car Display wraps up Saturday afternoon, while the public browses food trucks and local vendors on the closed street.
- The Audrain Automobile Museum, also on Bellevue Avenue, anchors the whole week and runs an ongoing exhibit of past concours winners for anyone who wants a preview without a ticket.
- The International Tennis Hall of Fame hosts both the free public Village and the ticketed Casino Royale Gala on Saturday night.
That's the actual geography of disruption: a handful of named addresses along Bellevue Avenue and one state park at the tip of the peninsula. The rest of Newport runs on its normal Thursday-through-Sunday rhythm.
Parking Without Circling Thames Street
Motor Week provides free event parking at three locations: Easton's Beach, Brenton Point State Park, and Fort Adams itself. All three operate first come, first served, with hours that shift day to day depending on what's scheduled. If you're heading toward the Village or Cars & Coffee, starting at one of those three lots beats hunting for street parking near Bellevue Avenue, especially during that Saturday midday window when the avenue itself is closed anyway.
What This Means For The Rest Of Your Week
If you live in Newport, the honest planning advice is this: build around one afternoon, not four days. Saturday between 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. is the only stretch where a specific street is actually closed to through traffic. Other events range from ticketed gatherings on private grounds to public events at Fort Adams and the free Village on Bellevue Avenue.
The week is bigger than it's ever been. The Bellevue Avenue closure is limited to one Saturday window. That's worth knowing when planning your week.
If you're weighing a move to Bellevue Avenue, Fort Adams, or anywhere else on the peninsula and want a neighbor's read on how events like this actually affect day-to-day life here, Brenton Reef Realty is a call away. Contact Schuyler for a local market consult.
