EIMA International 2026: A Triumph, Provided You Got There
The 2026 edition of EIMA International scored another point for the show. Unfortunately, complaints about inadequate infrastructure are clouding what should have been a celebration of success
EIMA International 2026 has gone into the record books with one confirmation: this is where farmers want to be, and they appear quite comfortable there. Here converge the resources, the spirit and the experience of the agricultural mechanisation, mechatronics and hydraulics industries rooted in north-eastern Italy, which carry decisive weight in the make-up of the European farm machinery sector. EIMA International has won its contest with SIMA Paris and has established itself as the alternative to Agritechnica in even-numbered years. And yet…
Structure and infrastructure
The edition that has just gone into the archive, helped along by a spell of relentless rain, left us with a city at breaking point. The structure, meaning the exhibition halls, which are being expanded, is paying the price of obsolescence, while the infrastructure left visitors quite literally stranded: endless queues for a taxi or a standing place on the Exhibition Centre– Train Central Station shuttles, and even would-be passengers ignored at the stops by drivers exasperated by over-packed, perpetually late runs. An an airport out of its depth, a patched-up railway station (light years from the project by the architect Bofill in the mid-1990s), and an insufficient public transport system (will the red line of the forthcoming tram network prove the cure-all?).
The writer says so with bitter reluctance, having been born some 50 km from Bologna and having graduated from the Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna (the oldest university in the Western world). A dose of reality is sometimes necessary (“Navigare necesse est, vivere non est necesse” – To sail is necessary; to live is not -, as the historian Plutarch attributed to the Roman general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus), not least because the fine machine built by FederUnacoma, the Italian federation of agricultural machinery manufacturers, deserves to carry on along its path and win further acclaim. Its success is real, and it survives even the downward curve of the agricultural market and the current difficulties of the national manufacturer.
Hall 15 makes room for smaller engines and hybrid formulas
The health of the show itself, which is bursting with vitality, is also demonstrated by the liveliness of the hall devoted to propulsion solutions. SAIM Industrial has pushed hard on the bridging solution that pairs the internal combustion engine with a battery pack: full hybrid and range extender. What we can reveal in advance is the collaboration with a number of OEMs on range extender installation, Forigo first among them, and with AGCO Power, for which SAIM Industrial has become the distributor of the CORE 75 and the CORE80.
Among the previews, a further point in favour of a mature EIMA (we should recall that the biennial calendar, which dates back some twenty years, was a brilliant tactical choice on the part of the organisers) is Deutz’s 1.6-litre engine, developed jointly with Kirloskar, a choice that takes Cologne below the 2.2-litre comfort zone.
Yanmar also unveiled an innovative aftertreatment solution, which has “ovalised” the module, making it more compact and easier to accommodate in the stacked layout above the engine.
FPT, for its part, just days after its definitive entry into the Tata ecosystem, hit the mark with three winning engines at Tractor of the Year. Rehlko relied on one of its flagship operations in Europe, Valdinoci, which presented a powerpack that is a contender among the silenced units. Rama Motori welcomed the return of FAWde to its range, initially for motor pumps and fire-fighting sets.
EIMA International 2026 has plenty more to tell. You will find it shortly here and on the pages of POWERTRAIN International.
