BMW brought more than 80 vehicles to the 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic this week, but two of them carried all the weight. The fifth-generation X5 and the facelifted 7 Series made their Czech public debut side by side, barely days after the new X5 broke cover at BMW’s Spartanburg plant.
The pairing is deliberate. BMW has turned European film festivals into rolling auto shows, and nobody else in the German luxury space is working this circuit with the same consistency. The 7 Series facelift already turned heads at Cannes just weeks ago, parked next to a classic E38.
In Karlovy Vary, BMW swapped the nostalgia play for a power move, showing the i7 M70 — the fully electric M Performance variant — alongside its freshly redesigned SUV.
The X5 on display wears Vancouver Green paint over 23-inch Individual aero wheels. Inside, it’s loaded with Individual Smoke White leather and a matching steering wheel. The real conversation piece is the slate trim surrounding the crystal glass controls on the center console.
BMW calls it a first for the automotive industry — actual stone integrated into the interior surfaces. A 14.6-inch passenger display rounds out the tech showcase. This is BMW making it clear that the X5 isn’t just a volume seller anymore.
It’s a statement about where the brand’s interior design is headed, borrowing liberally from the 7 Series playbook.
The Czech configurator for the 2027 X5 is already live, offering two powertrains at launch. The 40d xDrive diesel starts at roughly €92,600, while the gasoline 40 xDrive comes in around €96,000. Plug-in hybrid and fully electric versions won’t be available to order until early October, which tells you something about the production ramp timeline.
BMW’s fleet at the festival included roughly 35 fully electric vehicles out of the 80-plus total. The iX3, M5, and X7 are all present. So is a one-off M2 built to mark 20 years of BMW operations in the Czech Republic — a nice bit of local flavor that probably plays better in Karlovy Vary than it would in Munich.
BMW Motorrad got a slice of the action too, with the M 1000 R and M 1000 XR parked alongside the cars in front of the Imperial Spa hotel. Everything stays on display through Saturday, July 11.
This is the 12th consecutive year BMW has served as the festival’s official vehicle partner, providing shuttle services for attendees. Twelve years is a long time to own a sponsorship like this, and it reflects a broader strategy that treats cultural events as product launch platforms rather than just branding exercises. Cannes one month, Karlovy Vary the next — each festival gets a slightly different vehicle mix, a slightly different narrative, but the same underlying message.
The new X5 is the one to watch here. It’s the car that pays the bills at Spartanburg, the single most important nameplate in BMW’s American manufacturing operation. Dressing it up in stone trim and bespoke leather at a Czech film festival is BMW telling the world this isn’t your dentist’s X5 anymore. Whether buyers at the €90,000-plus entry point agree will determine a lot about BMW’s next few years.
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