Paris, September 25, 1909. Beneath the vast glass roof of the Grand Palais, visitors encounter machines that, only a few years earlier, would have seemed lifted from a science fiction novel. Blériot, Voisin, Antoinette, Wright, Farman, and Santos-Dumont airplanes sit beside engines, propellers, airships, and a wealth of inventions aimed at conquering the skies. On that day, the First International Exhibition of Aerial Locomotion is opened in the presence of President of the Republic Armand Fallières. Planned to run until October 17, the event brings together about 380 exhibitors and attracts over 100,000 visitors. It is today regarded as the direct ancestor of the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget.
Last year, from December 24 to 30, 1908, the Paris Automobile Show already set aside at the Grand Palais a section devoted to the "things of the air". Visitors could notably see Clément Ader's airplane, Santos-Dumont's Demoiselle, and the airship Ville-de-Bordeaux. The success of this display convinced the organizers that an autonomous show dedicated to aeronautics could now find an audience. Among the men driving the project were André Granet, who would oversee the organization, and engineer and aviator Robert Esnault-Pelterie, one of France's pioneers of powered flight. Less than a year later, aviation thus has its own grand Paris showcase.
The calendar gives a special resonance to this first edition. On July 25, 1909, exactly two months before the fair opens, Louis Blériot crossed the English Channel from Calais to Dover aboard his Blériot XI. His flight of about thirty kilometers spectacularly proved that a heavier-than-air machine could bridge the natural barrier separating two countries! A few weeks earlier, the Wright brothers had also staged highly notable demonstrations in Europe, while in August 1909 the Champagne Aviation Week near Reims gathered the best pilots of the moment. In a matter of months, the airplane has moved from a technical experiment observed by a few insiders to a phenomenon followed by the press and the crowds.
The Grand Palais then becomes the showcase for an industry still taking shape. Among the machines on display are several Blériot designs, as well as aircraft from Antoinette, Farman, Voisin, Wright, Breguet and Caudron. Visitors can also inspect engines from Anzani, Gnome and Renault, essential to the rapid progress of flight. The contrast is striking between the nave's monumental elegance—built less than a decade earlier for the 1900 Exposition Universelle—and these lightweight structures made of wood, canvas, cables and metal, whose ultimate potential is still unknown.
A machine, however, reminds us that the dream of flight predates 1909: Clément Ader's Avion III. Built in the 1890s and recognizable for its bat-inspired wings, the craft already belongs to the prehistory of aviation by the time it is on display. Its presence among more modern machines gives the event the feel of an accelerated history of mechanical flight. In roughly fifteen years, Ader's still-uncertain experiments gave way to aircraft capable of controlled flights, breaking records and, now, crossing the Channel.
The staging largely shapes the impression on visitors. André Granet envisions the exhibition as a coherent whole rather than a mere string of trade stalls. The displays are arranged beneath the vaste coupole du Grand Palais, in a setting designed to give a spectacular unity to the centaines d'exposants. Moreover, the show offers not only complete aircraft: engine manufacturers, parts suppliers, inventors and equipment makers demonstrate that, around the pilots' feats, an entire secteur industriel aéronautique is already taking shape!
Since the first powered flights at the dawn of the century, aviation has mostly been told through its pioneers and their records: the Wright brothers, Santos-Dumont, Farman, Blériot, or Delagrange. The Paris Air Show reveals another reality: behind the pilot there now appear the manufacturer, the engine designer, the engineer, the propeller maker, the investor, and the potential customer. The airplane becomes an object that is refined, produced, exhibited, and sold. The vocabulary itself remains hesitant: people still speak of "air locomotion", as if this new way of moving about is still searching for its name.
The success of the exhibition quickly established that the event could become regular. A second Exposition of Aerial Locomotion is staged at the Grand Palais in 1910, followed by further editions before the First World War. After the interruption caused by the conflict, the fair resumes in 1919 and, for several decades, it tracks the transformations of aviation, now civil, commercial and military. The Grand Palais remains closely tied to this history: aircraft sometimes have to be dismantled to enter the building, before being reassembled under its glass roof!
As aircraft advanced and the aerospace industry scaled up, the Paris venue eventually grew too tight. From 1949, the show moved flight demonstrations to the Orly airport, while the static exhibitions lingered at the Grand Palais for a while longer. In 1953, the event finally settled at the Le Bourget airport, just north of Paris. It is there that the gathering would evolve into the global affair now known as the Paris–Le Bourget International Air and Space Show.
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Dates and Opening Time
On September 25, 2026
Location
Grand Palais
3 Avenue du Général Eisenhower
75008 Paris 8
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M° Champs-Elysées Clemenceau
Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace at Le Bourget, a unique place that puts stars in your eyes
Grand Palais: opening hours, prices... everything you need to know about this architectural gem on the Champs-Elysées
