There are plenty of truck shows where you can trace the trends of the moment. Forbidden Fantasy Show n Shine is more interesting because you can see several generations of custom-truck culture sharing the same show field.
That was on full display March 27–28 at the Avi Resort & Casino in Laughlin, Nevada, for Forbidden Fantasy Show n Shine 2026. Minitrucks remain part of the event’s DNA, but Cheri Delgadillo’s photographs show just how broad Forbidden Fantasy has become: radically customized compact pickups, laid-out full-size trucks, detailed classics, SUVs, imports and finished customs that refuse to fit neatly into one category.
Nearly three decades after Forbidden Fantasy held its first show, the event hasn’t abandoned the scene that built it. Instead, it has grown around it.
Forbidden Fantasy’s show history reaches back to 1998 in Southern California. Over the years the event changed locations and evolved with the custom-truck scene before making a major move to the Avi Resort & Casino in 2016.
Gauge Magazine documented that first Laughlin chapter with coverage of the 19th annual Forbidden Fantasy Show and Shine. The event later spent several years away from the property before returning to the Avi in 2024.
That return put Forbidden Fantasy back in a setting that feels distinctly different from a typical fairgrounds or convention-center show. The Avi gives the event the Colorado River, desert surroundings, resort property and enough room for the show to develop its own atmosphere throughout the weekend.
The easiest way to underestimate Forbidden Fantasy is to think of it strictly as a minitruck show. The roots are absolutely there, but the 2026 field went much further.
A Bentley sitting low among custom pickups makes that point pretty quickly. It isn’t there because Forbidden Fantasy has forgotten where it came from. It fits because the same ideas that have driven custom-truck culture for decades—stance, wheels, paint, bodywork and making a vehicle unmistakably your own—aren’t limited to one platform.
Across the grounds, those ideas showed up in very different ways. Some builds were clean and restrained. Others went all-in with graphic paint, extensive body modifications, detailed engine compartments and proportions far removed from anything that originally rolled off the assembly line.
That contrast is part of what makes the show worth spending time with. A radically modified compact truck can sit a few rows away from a laid-out late-model full-size pickup, a classic custom or a luxury car, yet they still make sense together.
None of that means the minitrucks have become background material. They remain one of the strongest threads running through Forbidden Fantasy.
The 2026 gallery is loaded with compact pickups sitting inches from the pavement, convertibles and heavily altered bodies, tilt-bed builds, detailed engine bays, bright paint and graphics, and trucks whose factory sheetmetal has been transformed enough that identifying what they started life as can take some work.
Those trucks connect the current event directly to the culture that created Forbidden Fantasy in the first place. This isn’t simply a collection of surviving builds being brought out as reminders of another era. Old-school influences are still being carried forward, rebuilt and mixed with newer interpretations of the same scene.
Minitrucking didn’t disappear just because its mainstream visibility changed. Builders kept building. Clubs kept showing. Trucks were rebuilt, updated and passed between generations. Events like Forbidden Fantasy gave that culture somewhere to remain visible.
The grass display at the Avi isn’t simply overflow parking. For 2026, entrants seeking a spot on the grass had to submit a photograph of their vehicle for approval, with the organizers specifying that vehicles considered for that area needed to be fully painted and completed.
That standard helps explain why the show photographs reveal so much detail when you look past the overall stance of the vehicles. Open hoods expose finished engine compartments. Paint continues through areas that could easily have been ignored. Wheels, interiors, fabrication and bodywork are treated as parts of a complete build rather than isolated upgrades.
That’s the kind of truck that rewards more than a quick walk-by. The stance and paint may grab your attention first, but opening up the build reveals the fabrication and detail underneath it. At a show built around finished customs, those are the details that separate a complete build from a truck that is simply low on a big set of wheels.
The full-size side of Forbidden Fantasy deserves attention of its own. Chevrolet and GMC pickups, SUVs, classic trucks and other full-size customs brought the same laid-out attitude to a much larger canvas.
That extra sheetmetal gives builders room to do things differently. Graphic paint becomes physically bigger. Wheel and tire combinations become more dramatic. Detailed engine compartments have more room to make an impression. A full-size truck or SUV laid hard over a large-diameter wheel creates an entirely different proportion than a compact pickup built around the same basic philosophy.
It also demonstrates how much the custom-truck scene has crossed over between generations. The dividing line between “minitruck” and “full-size custom” matters a lot less when both are being built with the same obsession over stance, fabrication, presentation and detail.
A show that started in 1998 doesn’t stay relevant simply by repeating the same formula forever. It also doesn’t survive by abandoning the people and vehicles that gave it an identity.
Forbidden Fantasy has managed to occupy the space between those two extremes.
The old-school minitruck influence is still obvious. So are the clubs, slammed trucks, convertibles, tilt beds and custom paint that helped define the scene. But alongside them are full-size builds, luxury platforms, SUVs, imports and customs representing different branches of today’s enthusiast world.
That’s what makes Forbidden Fantasy Show n Shine 2026 more than a nostalgia trip. The history is visible everywhere you look, but so is everything the custom scene has become since.
Photos by Cheri Delgadillo for Gauge Magazine.
Cheri’s complete coverage from the Avi includes radical minitrucks, full-size customs, classic pickups, SUVs, imports, detailed engine compartments, custom paint, convertibles, tilt-bed builds and plenty more from the 2026 weekend.
Check out the complete Forbidden Fantasy Show n Shine 2026 gallery below.
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