ICBF
ICBF 2026 took place in Utrecht on 12-13 October. Thanks for making it special!
We’ll see you again in Nijmegen in 2027!
Carrier Magazine
Human-centred stories from across the globe of those who ride cargo bikes.
Issue 02 out now in print. Issue 03 out Spring 2027.
Thanks for making ICBF 2026 extra special!
ICBF 2026 took place on 12-13 October 2026 at Jaarbeurs, Utrecht
We’ll see you again in 2027! Check back soon for an ICBF 2026 recap gallery.
Carrier Magazine
Telling the human-centred stories of those who ride cargo bikes
Issue 02 out now in print
The original annual cargo bike event
2027 dates to be announced
📍 Nijmegen, Netherlands
Relaxed, vibrant atmosphere
⚙️ Focus on professionals
💫 Superb line-up of exhibitors
🪧 Test-track
🗣️ Expert speakers and panels
The original annual cargo bike event
12-13 October 2026
📍 Jaarbeurs, Utrecht
Relaxed, vibrant atmosphere
⚙️ New focus on professionals
💫 Superb line-up of exhibitors
🪧 Test-track
🗣️ Expert speakers and panels
Who should come to the ICBF?
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Cargo Bike Dealers
Meet new OEMs, network with industry figures and get up to speed on the latest cargo bike tech.
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Investors
Connect with trailblazing startups and established players driving the future of urban mobility and logistics
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Policymakers
Network and share knowledge with your peers on cargo bike related topics, and connect with cargo bike industry players
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Fleet Managers
Streamline your fleet by transitioning to cycle logistics. Test ride cargo bikes and tech, watch expert panels and speakers, and share knowledge with peers.
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Leasing, Insurance and Finance Professionals
Tap into and support the booming cargo bike market by connecting with fleet managers, consumers and professionals in this rapidly growing sector.
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Software, IoT and Tech Developers
Meet fleet managers, cargo bike brands and consumers; and find out how your tech interfaces with the real world.
#DecadeoftheCargoBike
Our goal is to inspire the world to stop using cars and vans and instead start using cargo bikes. That’s why we’ve declared the 2020s the Decade of the Cargo Bike.
Why? We believe the cargo bike will hit the mainstream in this decade. The potential impact is enormous, so join us, and together let’s make it happen.
Jos Sluijsmans and Tom Parr, organisers of the International Cargo Bike Festival
Features
Take a deep dive into the world of cargo bikes and pedal powered logistics with long reads from the International Cargo Bike Festival.
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Gallery: ICBF 2026 Recap
On Monday 12th and Tuesday 13th October 2025, professionals from the cargo bike industry gathered in Utrecht for the 2026 edition of the International Cargo Bike Festival. Here are some of the highlights.
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Seven practical ways to lower cargo bike and LEV fleet TCO
The purchase price is only the opening line of a fleet business case. The true cost appears over time, in maintenance hours, parts, repairs, administration and every period when a vehicle cannot do its job. Ahead of ICBF 2026, PENDLR shares seven practical ways for fleet owners and service partners to improve uptime and lower total cost of ownership.
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Lower your TCO with PENDLR and keep your fleet moving
Urban logistics is no longer waiting for the future. Cargo bikes, longtails, smart trailers and light electric vehicles are already part of daily delivery and service operations. That makes the industry’s next challenge less about whether these vehicles can work and more about how to keep them working reliably and cost effectively. At ICBF 2026, PENDLR will bring a clear message for fleet owners, operators and service partners: lower your total cost of ownership by treating uptime, parts and maintenance as one connected system.
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Photo Essay: Erik Binggeser’s Big Dumb Trucks
Erik Binggeser – a.k.a. @truemarmalade – explores the American landscape from an idiosyncratic vantage point: the saddle of his cargo bike. As he’s criss-crossed the US, he has documented a troubling phenomenon he calls “Big Dumb Trucks” — oversized, often modified SUVs and pickups that dominate the road and make even a heavy-duty cargo bike look like a toy.
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Cycling in the Netherlands in 2035
Originally published as part of the Fietsersbond-published essay collection Dromen over 2035 (Dreams about 2035), ICBF Director Jos Sluijsmans looks ahead to 2035 and lays out his vision for how cycling should then look in the Netherlands.
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Gallery: ICBF 2025 Recap
On Monday 13th and Tuesday 14th October 2025, professionals from the cargo bike industry gathered in Utrecht for the 2025 edition of the International Cargo Bike Festival. Here are some of the highlights.
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Opinion: Overcrowded bike lanes? Why not ride on the road?
The Netherlands increasingly crowded bike lanes are seeing increasing speed, size and mass of bicycles - and the safety of the most vulnerable cyclists sometime suffers because of it. But, as Jos Sluijsmans argues, a solution could lie in the law as it now stands.
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Enter the 3X3 NINE: Heavy Duty for Heavy Hauling
Lindsay Broadwell takes a deep-dive into 3X3's NINE hub. "For me, it’s one of the most exciting innovations that I’ve come across in quite a long time."
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Where do we go from here? A cargo bike research call to action
Cycling, and particularly cargo cycling, has only recently started to attract much in the way of academic attention. While cycling as a whole is pretty commonly discussed in academic circles, especially around sustainability and getting rid of the dominance of the car in our lives, our towns, and our cities (and rurally too!) – the cargo bicycle specifically is a bit neglected.
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Wheels of Resilience: CargoCult’s Unexpected Journey
Yuliya Belinskaya is one of the three founders of CargoCult in Kyiv, Ukraine. Back in 2021, amid the pandemic, she started the cargo bike delivery company alongside co-founders Karina Agakhanova and Oleksii Khvorostenko. But as Yuliya explains, although CargoCult have designed, built and used their own cargo bikes a lot since then, things didn’t quite work out exactly how they had expected.
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Cargo bikes: are our imaginations holding us back?
What is cycling? What can you do with a bicycle? Empirically, a huge amount, but depending on who you ask, it often isn’t seen that way.
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Gallery: ICBF Parade 2023
On Sunday 26th November 2023, a group of cargo bikers braved the cold, wet weather for a parade through Amsterdam, organised by Bike Sound System and Dr. Beyk. The parade stopped briefly at Dam Square and Museumplein before ending at the International Cargo Bike Festival venue RAI Amsterdam. Here are some of the highlights.
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Opinion: Jos Sluijsmans on the ICBF's partnership with Fully Charged LIVE
“Why are you working with a car show?” It’s a loaded question – one we have been asked a lot by our friends in the cargo bike world since we announced our partnership to ‘co-locate’ the International Cargo Bike Festival alongside Fully Charged LIVE Europe. So, why?
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BYCS Perspectives: Editorial - The cargo bike is already serving as a change-maker
ICBF Co-organiser Tom Parr explores the topic of resilience and cargo bikes. The final instalment of the Perspectives: First & Last Mile series of articles - in partnership with BYCS.
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BYCS Perspectives: Powering New African Mobility, with Valerie Labi
Valerie Labi, CEO of Wahu!, explains how cargo bikes can bridge Ghana's "connectivity gap". Part of the Perspectives: First & Last Mile series in partnership with BYCS.
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Thinking outside the box
Jurjen Vellinga, Product Development Lead at DOCKR, has seen through several high-impact design projects in his short time at the company. We sat down with him to discuss some of the innovations he’s most proud of, and find out what they mean for DOCKR’s customers and the wider cargo bike industry.
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2023 according to DOCKR:
Kees Jan Blankestijn, Co-founder and Head of Product and Innovation at DOCKR on the five trends that will shape the future of mobility
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We need to talk about diversity in the cargo bike industry
The cargo bike is a machine that can act as a social leveller. But is that enough? MJ Somerville and Tom Parr reflect on diversity in the cargo bike industry and explore what needs to change.
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Five questions for… Yuliya Belinskaya of CargoCult Kyiv
One of the co-founders of Kyiv-based CargoCult, Yuliya Belinskaya, tells us about how they launched the first cargo bike business in the Ukrainian capital, the effects of the Russian invasion and their hopes for the future.
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Dodging the issue the cargo bike’s real impacts
Natalia Barbour reflects on the social and environmental impacts of the cargo bike.
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The CooP-Bike: a cargo bike for Africa
CooP-Africa builds and modifies various types of bicycles, serving rural and peri-urban communities in Kenya and Uganda. CooP-Africa's Luuk Eickmans introduces us to a variety of these life-changing bikes and cargo bikes, and how they are used.
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Driving Change
Scale-up New Motion Labs is preparing for the future by making changes at the top. We sat down with Marcel Fowler and Steven Senior to find out more about these changes, what drives them and what this means for the company, their customers, and the wider industry.
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We need to talk about TCO
As the cargo bike is adopted by more and more organisations across commercial, governmental and voluntary sectors, the demand for a coherent story and vision about the Total Cost of Ownership is becoming increasingly necessary.
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Behind the scenes: DOCKR’s expansion into Germany and Belgium
We take a look behind the scenes at DOCKR, focusing on their move into Belgium through the eyes of Expansion Managers Nina van Spengen and Shahram Razasade.
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Anatomy of a cargo bike breakdown
Tom de Wilton of Oxwash on the impact a cargo bike breakdown can have on an organisation, and Marcel Fowler and Lucas Lobmeyer of New Motion Labs on how breakdowns can be prevented.
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Cargo bike by subscription – the story of Oslo startup Whee!
Kari Anne Solfjeld Eid is a Norwegian cargo bike lover, bike activist and entrepreneur based in Oslo. She runs design agency Hoi! Oslo and last year launched Whee!, an e-cargo bike subscription service. This year they’ve extended their offerings with a maintenance subscription service and opened Kiosk, a community-owned coffee shop. This – in her own words – is the story of how they did it.
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The connected cargo bike
Cycle logistics is a complex business. But as the number of cargo bikes in commercial fleets explodes, how can organisations keep up? Two companies have decided that close cooperation between them is the key. We sat down with Luuk Nijland of Cargo Cycling and Andrej Sobotkiewicz of Paztir to find out how data can streamline cycle logistics for the benefit of riders, fleet managers and clients alike.
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Interview with Paztir CEO Andrej Sobotkiewicz
As Andrej Sobotkiewicz, Founder and CEO of Paztir, prepares to steer the business into 2021, he talks about the scale-up’s origin story, the challenges of 2020 and how he sees the future of last-mile logistics.
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Cargo Cycling and Swobbee: collaborate to innovate
When two of the most innovative businesses in cycle logistics join forces to collaborate, it draws attention from across the industry. Although Cargo Cycling only launched in April 2020, the brand boasts a fully-formed range of cargo bikes, including models for seemingly every possible use case. Meanwhile, Berlin-based Swobbee are blazing an innovation trail with their smart batteries and charging infrastructure. Could this be a marriage made in heaven for Fleet Managers?
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The Business Case for Cargo Bikes
As traffic volumes increase in our city centres, partly fuelled by deliveries from a COVID boosted e-commerce sector, organisations are looking for a silver bullet for urban logistics. But has it been sitting right here under our noses all this time?
