Brabus has spent nearly fifty years making fast cars faster. Now the German tuner wants that same reputation on the water. Together with Italian builder AB Yachts, it has announced Brabus Yachts — the first full range of yachts to carry the Brabus name, with the debut model set to break cover at the Monaco Yacht Show this September.
There is no boat to look at yet. What the two companies put out is a single dark teaser render and a promise: a new line of larger luxury yachts that fuses Brabus design with AB's waterjet performance hulls. Name, length and specs are all being held back until Monaco (23–26 September). The reveal is the whole point.
A genuine first
Brabus is not new to the water. Its marine arm has co-branded the Brabus Shadow day-boats with Axopar since around 2018, and it has worked with Sunreef on luxury catamarans. Those were styling jobs on someone else's platform. Brabus Yachts is a different thing altogether: the first standalone, Brabus-badged range, and the first aimed at the larger end of the market.
That is why the AB Yachts pairing carries more weight than the earlier deals. This is a Brabus product, on a proper shipyard's hulls.
Why AB Yachts
AB Yachts, founded in 1992 and now part of Next Yacht Group, builds exactly the kind of boat a brand like Brabus needs. Its current range runs from the AB 80 (25.4 metres) to the AB 130 (39.65 metres), every one of them a lightweight composite hull on waterjet drives. These go fast in a specific way — trim-controlled, near-vibration-free, comfortably past 50 knots, with the top models nudging 60. A displacement yard would have been the wrong dance partner for a brand built on speed and power.
The Brabus boats are expected to sit on larger AB hulls than anything in the tuner's marine back-catalogue, which so far has stayed in the day-boat and catamaran classes.
The Brabus part
Brabus, founded in 1977 in Bottrop, sells a philosophy as much as horsepower. It calls the philosophy "Masterpiece" and chases what it describes as a "One-Second-Wow": the idea that a Brabus object should land its impression before you have finished looking at it. Aggressive lines, obsessive material choices, supercar-grade personalisation. On the road that means carbon and quilted leather. On the water it means — well, we don't know yet, and that is the tease.
Constantin Buschmann, CEO and owner, Brabus:“AB Yachts has exactly the kind of energy we're looking for: the drive to challenge what is possible, to push boundaries and to create something that instantly feels special.
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Giorgio Mattei, Deputy Chairman, Next Yacht Group:“It was, quite simply, love at first sight. From our very first meeting, we recognised in BRABUS the same relentless passion for innovation, performance and bold design that defines AB Yachts.
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Cars keep coming to yachting
Brabus joins a crowded migration. Mercedes-AMG built a boat with Cigarette, Aston Martin drew the AM37, Lamborghini and Tecnomar made the 63, Bugatti put its name on Palmer Johnson's Niniette, and Ferrari is now chasing offshore racing with Hypersail. Brabus arrives from a different corner of the car world: it is a tuner, a company whose whole business is taking someone else's fast machine and making it louder, sharper, more personal. Point that instinct at a 50-knot waterjet hull and the target is obvious.
What Monaco will actually show
The two-model cadence is the real tell. A first yacht at Monaco 2026, a second already booked for 2027 — that reads as a product roadmap rather than a concept-car stunt. And with AB Yachts inside Next Yacht Group, there is a real production shipyard behind the name, which makes this more than a styling exercise. For now everything rides on one render and a date. We find out what Brabus Yachts actually looks like when the show opens on 23 September.
