FACTS AND FIGURES

Gostiny Dvor. A premium exhibition venue just a stone's throw from Red Square. The atrium's 12,000 square meters is comparable in size to St. Mark's Square in Venice, and its glass roof is the largest of its kind in Europe.

· Exhibitors. 235 companies from 16 countries - 79% Russian (187 exhibitors) and 21% international (48 exhibitors). More than a third of the total floor space was occupied by the tourism industry, just under a third by equipment manufacturers and retailers, a fifth by training organizations, and the remainder by surface water sports, apparel, and related goods.
The Maldives sent the largest delegation of foreign exhibitors this year.

Top 3 countries by number of exhibitors: Maldives - 10, Egypt - 8, Indonesia and China - 5.
The exhibitor traveling the farthest from Moscow: Sisa Dwana Lodge (South Africa)



· Visitors. 20,200 guests over 4 days, including: 1,340 professionals, 1,250 invited guests, 220 media and press representatives, 300 school and university students, 250 representatives of relevant government agencies and public organizations, and 85 underwater photographers.

· Cultural Program. The main stage and conference hall hosted 67 lectures, presentations, roundtables, and masterclasses, 10 film screenings, 4 awards ceremonies, the grand show Heroes of the Deep, and a violin concert. During the Gift Hour on the main stage, 52 valuable prizes donated by exhibitors were given away. The Underwater Image Gallery was presented on an expanded scale: two hundred works, including paintings, the photo collection of the Wild Underwater World festival, and a new initiative from the team - the Underwater Photo Awards competition.

VISITOR PROFILE

Distribution by activity type. As in every previous year, divers traditionally make up the majority of exhibition visitors - and this year they again accounted for exactly 61%, a somehow magical number that signals both stability and the consistency of the survey methodology. The other segments retained their relative positions in the rankings but saw modest declines in share: freedivers at 19% once again surpassed spearfishers, who came in at 12%, while yachters, underwater photographers, and water tourists each accounted for 5–7%.

Age. By the fashionable generational alphabet: visitors are dominated - four-fifths of the audience - by Generation X (ages 45–60) at 31%, and Millennials-Y (ages 30–45) at 41%. One in ten attendees is a seasoned Boomer (60+), while the flourishing Generation Z (18–30) has doubled compared to last year, growing from 10% to 18% - a genuinely encouraging development. Generation Alpha has yet to make its mark: they are just turning 14, old enough for a passport, and old enough to start diving.

The oldest visitors are spearfishers and water tourists (median age 48), while the youngest are board riders (kite, surf, SUP), with a median age below forty. Divers sit comfortably in the middle of the age spectrum at an average of 42.

Gender. Some interesting shifts have occurred in the male-to-female ratio. Across all activity segments except freediving, the share of male visitors grew slightly. Last year, board sports enthusiasts (kite, surf, SUP) took the crown as the most female-dominated activity; this year, that title belongs to freedivers. In freediving, the male-to-female ratio is now approaching parity at 54/46 - an important signal for equipment manufacturers and coaches alike.

Spearfishing remains the most male-dominated activity by a wide margin, with women accounting for just 9% - though for such a demanding branch of underwater sport, that is no small figure.



Newcomers. The 14% of first-time visitors who came to find a new hobby represent crucial growth potential - these are the people who will become the next generation of water and underwater sports enthusiasts. Women (67% of all newcomers) are drawn toward diving, surfing, and snorkelling. Men more often listed diving and yachting among the options they were considering. The core of this newcomer group is made up of people aged 30–35, both men and women alike. Newcomers are younger than the average visitor, and women are noticeably more prevalent among them.

Seasoned enthusiasts. Newcomers entering the hobby are very important, but even more valuable are those who came, stayed, and never left. These are the backbone of the community - experienced, active, and purpose-driven: they come to the exhibition with clear goals in mind - upgrading their equipment, planning a trip, catching up on the latest news. This group is a confident majority at the show, with almost half - 48% - reporting more than ten years in the sport.

Cross-activity participation. Two out of five divers (40%) also practice freediving, while one in four freedivers (27%) and one in three divers (31%) also engage in spearfishing. Underwater pursuits are by no means foreign to the yachters, surfers, and board riders attending the show either: four out of five reported having at least one underwater interest - diving, freediving, spearfishing, or underwater photography.

Geographic reach. 95% of visitors came from Russia, 5% from other countries; 67% from Moscow and the Moscow Region, 8% from St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, with 70+ cities named by respondents in the survey. The fact that a third of guests travelled from outside the capital is a meaningful quality benchmark for the exhibition - our sincere thanks to everyone who made a special trip to Moscow Dive Show 2026.

Professionals at the show. 1,340 professionals at the rank of divemaster, instructor, commercial diver, or skipper registered at the exhibition and received a Professional badge. The relative standing of individual certification systems remained unchanged - the top three being NDL, PADI, and CMAS. One notable trend: Molchanovs freediving instructors have nearly caught up with TDI/SDI and SSI. The number of credentialed professional divers also grew.



Old friends of the show. More than 60% of visitors had attended the exhibition before, with 42% having come three or more times. This also explains the high volume of direct searches on Yandex and Google using terms like Дайвшоу (Diveshow), Dive Show, дайверская выставка (diving exhibition), and so on. Guests are looking up the exact dates and venue - they already know the show itself very well.

THE WATERMAN 2026. SURVEY FINDINGS.

This year, visitors were interviewed experimentally by professionals: sociology students from the Financial University under the Government of Moscow. Rather than completing a form at a registration terminal, visitors were invited to answer an expanded set of questions through in-depth interviews. A total of 519 completed questionnaires were collected and processed - an excellent sample size, more than sufficient for rigorous audience analysis. It allowed us to revisit familiar questions from a fresh angle, and to obtain answers to questions that had never appeared in previous surveys but are highly important for building a picture of the water sports enthusiast: whether their family and friends support their hobby, how much they spend on it, and how, and so on.

TOP 10 COUNTRIES BY VISITOR TRAVEL IN 2025

75% of respondents travelled abroad at least once in 2025, with 65% of those travellers visiting Egypt that year. Of them, approximately half (an absolute 33%) went nowhere else but Egypt.

The top three "water destinations” have remained unchanged for a long time, but while Egypt's grip on first place looks unassailable for the foreseeable future, the battle for silver and bronze between Turkey and the Maldives is heating up again. The Maldives made a powerful leap over the year - from 16% to 30% - claiming second place, while Turkey added 5 percentage points, rising from 16% to 21%, but that was only enough for third.

The Philippines nearly doubled its share - from 8.5% to 14% - and Indonesia jumped from 6% to 11%. Cuba captured 6% of tourism traffic and climbed to eighth place. Mexico burst into the rankings unexpectedly - 7% and seventh place, right behind Indonesia. It seems that stories of Russians being turned away at Mexican border control are a thing of the past, and this magnificent region is rightfully reclaiming its spot in the top tier of water destinations. If Mexico is a visa-free destination for Russians, another new entry is altogether more surprising: ninth place goes to the decidedly visa-requiring Cyprus.

Sri Lanka rounds out the top ten, just holding on to the last spot. Vietnam and the UAE have both dropped out of the Top 10 for 2025. The top ten destinations together account for four-fifths (81%) of all trips, with the remaining 19% spread across two dozen niche locations - the Seychelles, Spain with the Canaries and Tenerife, Malta, Greece, and further afield Italy, Montenegro, the Dominican Republic, and South Africa.

TOP RUSSIAN REGIONS BY VISITOR TRAVEL IN 2025

Domestic tourism figures remain stable. Two new entries have appeared in the rankings - the Moscow Region and the Leningrad Region - which simply hadn't been listed as options in the standard questionnaire before. In-depth interviewing allowed for a more granular look at Russian diving priorities, and it is entirely logical that many city dwellers head to local lakes and quarries rather than travelling to the far corners of the country. Third place for the Barents Sea correlates directly with the strong representation of dive centres and shore bases from that region at the exhibition. The Russian Far East continues to maintain a strong position - Vladivostok, Sakhalin, and Moneron attracted plenty of divers and water enthusiasts last year. The Volga Delta also received a strong share of votes, largely from spearfishers.

WHERE THEY BUY THEIR EQUIPMENT

This is a new and highly important question in the survey. We were fully expecting marketplaces to come out on top - but the assumption of their total dominance turned out to be a myth. Specialized stores won by a huge margin: 68% named this as their preferred shopping channel. Marketplaces came second, chosen by 15% of respondents; 13% made purchases at foreign shops while travelling; even fewer turned to Avito and similar platforms - 7%; and 11% said they prefer not to buy equipment at all, opting to rent instead.

SPENDING ON THE HOBBY

Another new addition to the survey, and an important indicator of market health. Respondents stated the total amount they had spent on their hobby in 2025 - covering equipment, travel, training, and other expenses combined. Almost 40% reported spending up to 100,000 rubles; 25% spent between 100,000 and 300,000 rubles; and nearly the same proportion spent over 500,000 rubles.

WATER BRINGS PEOPLE TOGETHER

We asked about more than just tourism, equipment, and money. As Monsieur Cousteau once said, our films are not about fish - they are about the people who dive to see them. Sharing your passion with loved ones and friends adds another powerful bond, as people like to say these days. We dive for a couple of hours a day; the rest of the time we spend talking on land. A tip for single ladies on the lookout: your chances of meeting a single, attractive, and financially comfortable man on a dive safari are considerably higher than on a beach or a dance floor. Two thirds of those who are married or in a relationship dive or sail together; a third of children follow in their parents' footsteps; and friends score the highest - four out of five share a common passion.

CULTURAL PROGRAMME

The main stage and conference hall hosted 67 lectures, presentations, roundtables, and masterclasses, 10 film screenings, 4 awards ceremonies, the grand show Heroes of the Deep, and a violin concert. During the Gift Hour on the main stage, 52 valuable prizes donated by exhibitors were given away. The Underwater Image Gallery was presented on an expanded scale: two hundred works, including paintings, the photo collection of the Wild Underwater World festival, and a new initiative from the Dive Photo Team - the Underwater Photo Awards competition, sponsored by Divevolk, the brand behind underwater housings and accessories for smartphone photography. The children's corner was also there, where marine biologist Konstantin Neverov displayed samples of underwater microfauna under a microscope - creatures that fed and reproduced before the delighted eyes of the young audience.

MOSCOW DIVE SHOW 2027. PREPARATIONS ARE ALREADY UNDERWAY.

The dates for the twelfth Moscow Dive Show 2027 have already been set: February 25–28, at the same venue - Gostiny Dvor. The floor plan will begin to be updated from May onwards; stay tuned for news on the website. Returning exhibitors may confirm their booth locations by paying a 10% deposit no later than 1 May 2026. Booth reservations can and should be made by emailing sale@diveshow.ru, and all exhibition news can be followed on the website diveshow.ru