Beretta Turns 500: Five Centuries of Making Guns
The world's oldest active firearm manufacturer has been doing this for half a millennium
There aren't many businesses that can genuinely say they've been doing the same thing for 500 years.
Most companies would be pleased to make it through five.
Some don't even make it through their first website redesign.
But in Italy, one family business has managed to keep making firearms through wars, revolutions, changing governments, industrialisation, world wars, technological revolutions and just about everything else history could throw at it.
That company is Fabbrica d'Armi Pietro Beretta.
And in 2026, Beretta is celebrating its 500th anniversary.
That's quite an achievement.
It started in 1526
The Beretta story officially begins in 1526, when Bartolomeo Beretta supplied 185 gun barrels to the Arsenal of Venice.
That original document is generally regarded as the beginning of the Beretta story, and the company has remained connected to firearms manufacturing ever since.
Five centuries is a difficult amount of time to comprehend.
The world looked rather different in 1526. There were no modern cartridges, no semi-automatic pistols, no PCP air rifles, no red dots and certainly no internet arguments about which scope mount is better.
Firearms themselves were still relatively primitive by modern standards.
Yet the business that began making gun barrels in Italy has continued through generation after generation of the Beretta family, eventually becoming one of the most recognisable names in the firearms industry.
It is also widely recognised as the oldest active firearm manufacturer in the world.
That's not simply a claim about age.
It is a claim about continuity.
There are older companies in existence, and there are plenty of historic firearms manufacturers, but very few can trace an uninterrupted firearms manufacturing tradition back five centuries.
500 years is a very long time
Beretta's history is particularly interesting because it isn't simply a case of a company surviving by keeping the same product on the same shelf for 500 years.
The company has had to continually adapt.
From hand-made barrels and early firearms, Beretta eventually moved into increasingly sophisticated sporting guns, military firearms and handguns, becoming particularly well known for designs such as the Beretta 92 family.
The company has supplied firearms to military and law enforcement organisations around the world, while also becoming deeply established in the sporting and hunting markets.
The name has therefore become familiar far beyond Italy.
For many people, their first encounter with Beretta might not even have been with a real firearm.
It may have been on television, in a film, in a video game, or perhaps through one of the many licensed replicas that have been produced over the years.
And that's where things get rather more relevant to us.
Beretta at Vector Air
We should probably point out at this stage that Vector Air doesn't sell firearms directly manufactured by Beretta.
We're an airgun and airsoft business, rather than a Beretta firearms dealership.
But Beretta's influence has certainly made its way into the products we sell.
A number of Beretta's best-known designs have been reproduced under licence as airguns and airsoft replicas, allowing shooters and collectors to own something based on the company's famous designs without buying an actual firearm.
Two names in particular are relevant here: UMAREX and Stoeger.
UMAREX has played a significant role in bringing highly detailed licensed replicas of famous firearms to the airgun and airsoft markets. Their Beretta replicas allow customers to experience the look, controls and general character of some very recognisable Beretta designs in formats suitable for the airgun and airsoft market.
It's an area where replica manufacturers have become surprisingly good at capturing the details that make a particular firearm recognisable.
And Beretta is an obvious brand for that treatment.
The shape of a Beretta 92, for example, is almost instantly recognisable.
You don't necessarily need to be a firearms enthusiast to know what you're looking at.
Then there's Stoeger
The other name worth mentioning is Stoeger.
Stoeger has a rather interesting place in the Beretta family tree.
The brand has a long history of its own, but following its acquisition by Beretta Holding through the wider Beretta Group, Stoeger has become particularly well known in the UK for producing more affordable sporting guns and airguns.
For Vector Air customers, this is probably the side of the Beretta empire that is more familiar.
Stoeger has established itself by producing airguns that offer a lot of usable specifications without necessarily wandering into the sort of pricing that makes you wonder whether you should actually be shooting the thing or putting it in a glass cabinet.
That makes Stoeger rather different from the traditional image of Beretta, but it is also part of what makes the wider group interesting.
The same overall organisation encompasses some of the most prestigious names in firearms while also having brands producing products aimed at shooters who simply want something that works without spending a fortune.
Two very different routes into the same name
There is something quite interesting about the way Beretta's name has reached the airgun and airsoft world.
On one side, you've got licensed replicas, where the attraction is very much tied to the original firearm.
The shape, markings, controls and overall appearance are part of the appeal.
On the other, you've got Stoeger airguns, where the focus is much more on producing an affordable and usable shooting platform.
Both ultimately connect back to the same enormous firearms history.
And that's something we think is worth acknowledging.
Because while a licensed Beretta replica isn't the same thing as owning a Beretta firearm, it is still part of the wider story of how famous firearms designs have found their way into other shooting disciplines.
Five centuries and counting
Beretta's 500th anniversary is also a useful reminder that the firearms industry has an unusually long memory.
Products come and go. Technologies change. Manufacturing methods change. Markets change. But names can survive.
Beretta has gone from producing gun barrels in 16th-century Italy to producing some of the world's best-known modern firearms, while building an enormous wider group of brands and businesses around it.
And it has done something that is exceptionally difficult for any manufacturer to achieve:
It has remained relevant.
That's perhaps the most impressive part of the story.
Being old is one thing. Being old and still manufacturing products that people actively want to buy 500 years later is something else entirely.
So, happy 500th birthday, Beretta
We might not have any actual Beretta-manufactured firearms sitting on our shelves, but we've got plenty of respect for what the company has achieved.
Five hundred years of continuous firearms manufacturing is an absurdly long run.
For a company that started with a gun barrel order in 1526 to still have its name recognised around the world in 2026 is quite an achievement.
And whether you've encountered Beretta through a real firearm, a licensed UMAREX replica, a Stoeger airgun, a film, a video game or simply because you've spent enough time around shooting to recognise that distinctive name, you've probably crossed paths with the company at some point.
So from everyone here at Vector Air:
Happy 500th anniversary, Beretta.
Here's to the next 500.
Although, admittedly, we'll probably still be arguing about which scope mount to use by then.
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