The fully nonlinear theory of global modes in open flows, proposed in recent analyses of amplitude equations, is extended to the case of Navier–Stokes equations using direct numerical simulations. The basic flow under consideration is a parallel wake in a finite domain generated by imposing the wake profile at the inlet boundary and by adding a body force to compensate the basic flow diffusion. The link between the global bifurcation, the absolute or convective nature of the local linear instability, and the theory of speed selection for the front separating an unperturbed domain of the flow from a fully saturated solution is elucidated. In particular, thanks to the parallelism of the flow, the bifurcation scenario and the associated scaling laws for the frequency, the healing length, and the slope at the origin predicted by a previous analysis of amplitude equations are recovered with great precision.