What we expect at CES 2026

CES 2026 doesn’t officially start until January 6, but if you’re a regular Gizmodo reader, you already know that it has started unofficially. Like every year, companies start releasing teasers and partial product announcements at the end of December, weeks before the biggest tech show even opens its doors in Las Vegas. Make sure to follow our live blog from CES 2026 to see everything our consumer technology team will be reviewing in person.

I have a strong feeling CES 2026 will be much busier than anyone expects. Six years after the pandemic, it seems to me, based on the first announcements, that the series is finally coming back to life. Revitalized by the promises of AI, whether automated, generative, agentic or otherwise, companies are once again daring to aim for the moon. So, what big trends do we expect from the biggest tech innovation show of the year? Ultimately, I may be wrong, but let me look into my crystal ball and see if I can connect some dots.

AI will be essential

More than any CES show in years past, we’ll see AI integrated into every gadget imaginable. Samsung, LG, Lenovo, Razer: all the biggest participants and even small, unknown startups will boast about why some form of AI is supposed to improve their products. Some AI applications could legitimately shake things up; the vast majority will be AI features for the sake of AI features, over-promising and under-delivering.

As journalists, we’ll spend our days at CES 2026 navigating the minefield of artificial intelligence scattered across laptops, mobile devices, appliances, transportation, and more. In the same way that Wi-Fi has been added to virtually every gadget, AI will find its way in even if you don’t want it to.

Do you really need AI in a washing machine or refrigerator? How many times will a major electronics company try to convince us in a crowded press conference that we need a new appliance to figure out how to cook a meal from leftover ingredients? The most useful AI features will be those that don’t even appear to be AI, LLMs or chatbots working invisibly in the background to make our lives more convenient.

A sea of ​​smart glasses

If you’re looking at a set of smart glasses, including Ray-Ban screen from MetaSomething last year foreshadowed about what to expect in 2026 is that there will be an avalanche of smart glasses coming.

As the possible next big thing after smartphones, every company seems to be trying to figure out how to bring smart glasses to market. How do you balance style and utility while valuing the high cost of early adopters and integrating AI to keep up with the latest trend? Meta might make you think he’s found a magic recipe, but in reality that’s not the case. A single pair of smart glasses with solid displays, cameras, battery life, speakers, AI, and apps remains the holy grail device everyone is looking for.

Currently, smart glasses still have too many compromises. It’s also not clear that consumers want smart glasses that can do everything. That’s why we’ve seen so many types of smart glasses: those with single- and dual-lens waveguide displays, those without cameras (for privacy, naturally), or simple smart glasses. “AI Glasses” which best excel at taking photos and videos and listening to music like a pair of open-back headphones. Then there are video glasses like Xreal which focuses on XR functions to allow them to offer more computing features that would be found in larger XR or VR headsets.

I don’t expect a smart glasses project to emerge by the end of CES 2026, only that the variety of models and offerings will expand beyond what we’ve already seen shipped. There will be many more smart glasses than XR and VR headsets. THE the metaverse is dead; AI is now the new trend.

TV technology matters again

Okay, maybe consumers won’t care at all about what mic RGB Or WOLE That means, but TV makers will do their best to make their latest display technologies seem must-haves when they finally arrive on real flat screens.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand how backlight technologies work or your eyesight is deteriorating and you can’t see the wider dynamic range, expanded HDR, higher contrast or increased brightness. CES 2026 will showcase TV technology as it has for over 50 years. The show just wouldn’t be the same if you weren’t flying to observe the pixels.

I will be paying particular attention to the extent to which AI is being forced into new TVs and how companies are choosing to integrate AI into them. Google’s Gemini will undoubtedly replace the old Google Assistant, but I really want to see how neglected AI will be. I suspect there will be an uncomfortable amount of AI garbage masquerading as utility. More AI screensavers: sorry, canvas art. More AI to create fake images to make sports and games smoother, but visibly uglier when watching movies and TV shows due to motion smoothing.

Speaking of higher frame rates, I have to wonder how far TV manufacturers will go with refresh rates? 120Hz, 165Hz, and 240Hz already push the limits of the game, but don’t be surprised if there are plenty of TVs with even higher (and artificially enhanced) native refresh rates just to edge out the competition in a battle of specs sheets.

Electric vehicles and mobility are taking over

Everyone knows CES isn’t a car show, but it’s also impossible to ignore the entire electric vehicle, automotive and mobility technology hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Like a slow burn, there will be more of this. No more electric vehicles with absurd top speeds, longer ranges and screens plastered inside their interiors; no more electric bikes and scooters that blur the line with motorcycles; and more outlandish prototypes of flying cars and personal quadcopters that promise to fly through the sky (but probably never will).

Zooming in more specifically, my observation is that there will be a trend towards a return to in-car physical and touch controls. A decade ago, Tesla made touchscreen dashboards and controls ubiquitous, but automakers and consumers are now realizing that the good old buttons never needed to be — and perhaps never should have been — abandoned.

Personally, I welcome this return to sensitivity. As well as giving cars more differentiation and character, physical buttons, dials and buttons are actually more user-friendly while driving. Who could have imagined that turning a dial to adjust the volume or air conditioner would be faster than tapping multiple layers on a touchscreen layer?

And of course, like every other connected device at CES 2026, I’m sure we’ll see in-dash AI as well as more promise in self-driving technology.

Here are the house droids

It’s not that the smart home won’t have a big presence at the show – it will – but it’s currently being modernized with AI, so it won’t seem revolutionary. Google Assistant is in progress replaced by Gemini and Alexa with Alexa+. These “upgrades” are mostly about the backend, but as we’ve seen testing the first batch of products powered by these smarter voice assistants, the intelligence part isn’t quite there yet. When you need consumers to use two distinct modes – one for smart home controls and another for more conversational AI – as you do with Gemini, it reminds us that modernization is still a work in progress.

What should be much more exciting when it comes to smart homes is seeing intelligence merge with robotics within the home. I’m of course talking about humanoid robots that can lift objects and perform household chores, and even beefed-up robot vacuum cleaners that can climb stairs. At CES 2026, we should be able to take a closer look at some of these personal robots. They won’t be commercially available at an affordable price anytime soon, but at the very least they should give us an idea of ​​whether we’re really any closer to the sci-fi dream of having a real-life C-3PO to do our bidding.

More usual consumer technology

These are the big trends I expect to see at CES 2026. On a pure hardware level, the show will be filled with the usual new laptops and PCs, home entertainment systems (TVs and speakers), wearables, audio (wireless headphones and wireless earbuds), cameras, transportation (EVs, e-bikes, e-scooters), as well as mobile accessories and computing peripherals. A gadget paradise, if you will.

By the end of the show, Gizmodo’s consumer tech team will be exhausted and hungry, but we will have seen the entire show. CES is the best place to preview the future. Or rather, ideas about what the future will look like.