IFA Berlin 2026: seven important areas I’ll be watching, what I expect to see, and what will matter

With IFA 2026 (4–8 September), one of the world’s biggest consumer tech shows, just a few weeks away, I’m looking forward to being back in Berlin, connecting with companies across the industry and seeing the latest developments first-hand. Here are my thoughts on what to expect and what will matter. 

AI

As at every recent tech show, AI should dominate again – ubiquitous across appliances, devices and smart-home hubs, illustrated last year by slogans such as Samsung’s “AI Home” and Hisense’s “AI Your Life”. The important areas to focus on will include AI agents, on-device AI, AIoT and multimodal AI. Key things to look out for are advances in implementation and new use cases: agentic demos that actually complete tasks, what runs locally (on device) versus in the cloud, and AIoT making experiences more contextual and personalised. Equally important will be monetisation, advanced-AI reliability, and how OEMs manage privacy, security and safety as AI becomes able to act, not just answer.

The thing I look forward to most is seeing how LG builds on last year’s AI Appliances Orchestra, led by its FURON AI agent, with its expanded 2026 AI Home ecosystem, and whether FURON can genuinely coordinate devices and services around the user.

Wearables

Smart glasses should dominate, building on last year’s surge in interest. The market is splitting between audio-first glasses offering spoken assistance and display/AR glasses placing information in the user’s field of view. Key things to look out for will be advances in AR, deeper AI integration enabling richer visual understanding and context-aware assistance, how consumer uptake is progressing beyond the early leaders, battery-life improvements, smartphone dependence and the privacy debate around always-on cameras. Beyond glasses, AI-specific devices – including those built for transcription and translation – will be another area to track, particularly progress in their form factors and functionality. For smartwatches, the question will be whether anyone delivers another meaningful health capability rather than incremental tracking.

The thing I look forward to most is seeing how Rokid positions its display-equipped Rokid Glasses against its newer display-free Style model, and how its Agent Store, recently expanded into the US, is progressing in turning agentic AI into useful smart glasses experiences.

Smartphones

Expect iterative innovation, refreshes and concepts rather than breakthroughs. Premium OEMs increasingly reserve flagships for their own events; IFA is more relevant for smaller manufacturers, including rugged-phone vendors, while larger Chinese OEMs also showcase new devices, sometimes following earlier domestic launches. Tecno’s 0mm-border concept phone will be one to watch. Other important areas include deeper agentic-AI integration, on-device AI moving down price tiers, satellite direct-to-device, sustainability – including modularity and repairability – and further embodied-AI experimentation. With memory costs sharply higher, another important question will be how OEMs are looking to balance price increases, specification trade-offs, margins and demand.

The thing I look forward to most is going hands-on with Tecno's next-gen borderless concept phone.

Smart home

AI and interoperability should again be the big themes. Relevant areas will include Matter and the wider standards ecosystem, Big Tech smart-home ecosystems, the Open Home Foundation (exhibiting at IFA for the first time) and widening device portfolios. Key things to look out for include what Matter 1.6 delivers in practice, what Open Home brings to the conversation, how smart-home hubs evolve, whether AI makes homes more contextual, personalised and intelligent, and whether cross-brand interoperability genuinely becomes easier. Another important indicator will be whether Big Tech puts more weight behind interoperability and open ecosystems.

The thing I look forward to most is seeing the Open Home Foundation’s open-source, privacy-focused approach to the smart home in action – across projects such as Home Assistant – and what it brings to multi-brand interoperability and the Matter 1.6 conversation.

Robotics

Expect more humanoids, alongside non-humanoid robots such as robot vacuums, garden robots, robotic appliances and robots for fun and learning. Walking and waving demos are no longer enough. The important questions are what humanoids can reliably do today, which are already commercially available, realistic household-commercialisation timelines, and how advanced AI – including LLMs, LAMs and vision models – improves reasoning, perception and manipulation. Connectivity also deserves scrutiny: which robots use cellular, when 4G/5G is preferable to Wi-Fi, and whether 5G’s uplink capacity, latency and traffic prioritisation deliver tangible advantages.

The thing I look forward to most is Neura Robotics – one of Europe’s leading players in the humanoid race, freshly backed by a major funding round, and returning to Berlin to show how close its 4NE1 is to everyday use.

Digital gaming

Expect new gaming PCs, laptops, displays and perhaps handheld consoles. Key areas to assess will be how AI improves gaming beyond graphics enhancement and how increasingly competitive handhelds differentiate across areas such as performance, battery life and price. Mobile connectivity in handhelds will also be worth tracking. Cloud-gaming announcements matter too as gaming spreads across more devices and service continuity and network quality become increasingly important.

The thing I look forward to most is getting hands-on with Acer’s new Predator Atlas 8 handheld gaming console and seeing how its new Intel Arc G3 platform improves the gaming experience.

6G

I expect 6G to remain a relatively low-profile theme at IFA, given that commercialisation is still years away. The more interesting question will be how consumer-device OEMs think about it: whether they see credible benefits beyond faster speeds, such as real-time holographic communication, enhanced XR experiences and advanced AI digital assistants, and whether they can articulate where 5G falls short. The most revealing discussions will be those that connect 6G capabilities to genuine future consumer experiences.

The thing I look forward the most is any early 6G concepts and pre-standard technology demos that turns the technology into a tangible consumer experience.

Implications for operators

These developments expand the operator opportunity across connectivity, experience-based tariffs, bundling and adjacent digital services. AI agents, AI-capable devices and AI-generated content should increase downstream and upstream traffic, supporting higher-data plans. Across AI, gaming, smartphones and wearables, experience-based tariffs could differentiate connectivity through lower latency, stronger uplink, network-priority access or on-demand speed boosts. 

Beyond these tariffs, smart glasses create opportunities for wearable connectivity add-ons and device/service bundles, while AI-enabled smartphone experiences, including embodied AI, can support cloud services. As robots move outdoors and combine onboard, edge and cloud computing, cellular connectivity becomes more relevant, with 5G offering uplink, latency and prioritisation advantages. Smart-home momentum supports connectivity, multi-play and direct smart-home propositions. Across these areas, operator–OEM collaboration on connectivity optimisation, traffic management, security, resilience and safety becomes increasingly important.