Are you ready to kick off the new year with a tsunami of new technology? I hope so, because CES 2026 will opens its doors on January 6, where some of the biggest names in the consumer tech and automotive worlds will grace the myriad of convention halls spread across Las Vegas.
CES (Consumer Electronics Show) is the world’s biggest consumer technology show, and you can expect to see all manner of tech on display, from TVs, speakers and smart home appliances, to phones, tablets and wearables, all the way through to drones, robots, cars and more.
While almost every corner of consumer technology will be represented at CES 2026, there will be a common thread running through many of the booths, press conferences and behind-closed-doors meetings this year – AI.
We’ll bring you the latest news and insight on the biggest announcements and hottest products from the show, but for now here’s what you need to know in the run-up to the event.
What is CES?
As I’ve mentioned, this is the world’s biggest consumer technology show, which takes over the city of Las Vegas for pretty much a whole week. While the 2026 installment’s official dates are January 6-9, the reality is the show actually starts a couple of days before.
You can expect news and announcements to start landing from Sunday, January 4, with Monday, January 5 the official press day, where even more will be revealed.
I’ve been fortunate enough to attend CES many times over the years, and while some of the bigger names in tech have reduced their presence at the show, it seems to keep expanding. Not only does it take over the huge halls of the LVCC (the Las Vegas Convention Center), you’ll also find CES at The Sands and Mandalay Bay convention centers as well. Then there are events, meetings and briefings happening across the numerous mega-hotels on the strip too.
In short, there’s an awful lot of tech on show, and it’s the perfect way to setup the year ahead. Let’s take a look at what we can expect.
Computing
CES 2026 is looking set to be a bumper year for computing. Intel has already confirmed it will introduce its Panther Lake CPUs at the show, while AMD’s CEO, Lisa Su, is headlining the show’s opening keynote and reports suggest the firm could launch the Ryzen 7 9850X3D CPU. Oh, and Nvidia also has a press conference planned, with rumors of a new RTX 50 “Super” Series announcement – so that’s the big three all represented.
Then there’s computing hardware, with giants including Asus, Lenovo, Razer and more all potentially introducing new kit for us to check out – including laptops sporting Qualcomm’s recently announced Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Premium chips.
It’s the latter machines, with Qualcomm’s new chipsets in, which I’m most interested in. I currently use a Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 with the current-gen Snapdragon X Elite chip and I’ve been thoroughly impressed with it when it comes to battery life. It makes it an ideal work machine, and I’m keen to see how the second generation can improve on things.
My colleague Rami has taken a closer look at what to expect from Lenovo and Razer at CES 2026, and unsurprisingly AI is set to be the common theme.
So there will be plenty of chatter around CPUs, GPUs, and AI, and probably laptops and desktops too – almost enough to fill an entire show, but we’re just starting to scratch the surface of what CES 2026 will have to offer.
You want more? Don’t you worry, there’s more.
TVs
While computing firms are always well represented at CES, the TV world has a stronger legacy at the show, and we expect the major players to all have significant presence. We’re talking LG, Samsung and Sony, along with Hisense and TCL.
Samsung is hosting its The First Look event on January 4, which will be shown products from its TV, home appliances and mobile divisions, where we could see some new OLED TVs among the line-up.
Meanwhile, Sony is tipped to launch a new ‘True RGB’ – a term it trademarked recently, and could well point to a new mini-LED TV. LG will also be showing off various products, including its LG Signature OLED T – the world’s first transparent 4K OLED TV – which was announced a couple of months ago. We could also see the arrival of the C6 and G6 OLEDs.
Our contributor Tom Bedford goes into detail on LG’s CES 2026 presence, talking through what we expect from it in terms of TVs, but also other products such as smart home devices and appliances.
We also heard about Dolby Vision 2 at IFA 2025, although at the time details were extremely limited and just one Hisense TV supported the display tech. We could get more information, and see more TVs with it, at CES.
I walked the halls at IFA 2025 in Berlin, Germany back in September, and stared an awful lot of TVs, from OLED to mini-LED to microLED and more, and the quality that display tech is now at is quite astounding. I’m looking forward to laying eyes on even more at CES.
Mobile
CES typically isn’t a huge show for smartphone and tablet announcements, the industry has its own flagship event with MWC in Barcelona, Spain (at the start of March in 2026) where we’ll see more mobile focused announcements.
However, the Las Vegas, Nevada show won’t be devoid of the devices many of us have on our person pretty much 24/7.
Samsung recently launched the Galaxy Z Trifold – a fancy dual-hinged foldable phone, the first of its type to make it to the US in the coming months.
It was initially shown off in Samsung’s home market of South Korea, however CES 2026 provides the firm an excellent platform to show it off Stateside for the first time.
On top of that, there’s a chance we get a Samsung Galaxy S26 teaser too, as its next flagship phone series is expected to arrive later in January at its own standalone event.
It won’t just be Samsung making mobile noise, as Lenovo-owned Motorola could have some new announcements, while we’ll be keeping an eye on the likes of TCL and Sony.
Smart Home
Walking the floors at IFA 2025 and it felt like I was surrounded. At almost every turn there was some sort of robot vacuum, mop, lawn mower or pool cleaner.
If these bots were able to organize themselves collectively, there might have been some ugly scenes at Messe Berlin. Thankfully though, at least for now, these household chore bots don’t appear to have sentience, but what they are able to do is quite incredible.
From climbing stairs to robot arms to collect odd socks off the floor, these smart home devices will likely have a strong presence at CES 2026.
Automotive
An interesting trend I’ve witnessed in more recent years at CES is the proliferation of automotive brands at the show. When I started going to CES in the early 2010s, there was really not much in the way of auto presence at the show.
Fast forward to today though and we’re seeing major car brands have sizable booths. BMW tends to take over a chunk of on of the convention center parking lots, while non-traditional auto brands such as Sony and Xiaomi are also getting in on the action.
While my colleague Stephen Edelstein says he’s not expecting huge auto news at CES 2026, it will still be an important show for the industry “with an emphasis on commercialization alongside the flashy announcements.
“That means updates on getting new EVs into production, as companies are now working at the less-exciting task of turning their headline-generating announcements from previous years into real products.”
Let’s not forget the weird and wonderful
We can also rely on CES to produce some wacky moments too. From bizarre robots, strange cars and products you might have never considering existing in a million years, the show is a melting pot for pretty much anything people can come up with.
Many of these surprises tend to be tucked away in the corners of obscure halls, and I have happened upon some in the past purely by chance. These products tend to be the ones nobody predicted, so keep your eyes peeled throughout CES week to see what surprises are thrown our way.
And of course, AI
AI will be the trending topic throughout pretty much everything at CES 2026. It will be impossible to avoid, as companies continue to push the technology – in its many, many forms – onto consumers as a must-have feature.
A term we’ll likely hear more of at CES 2026 is “Agentic AI”. We are moving past chatbots that simply answer questions and can have a conversation with you.
We are expecting to see devices that don’t just plan a trip, but book the flights and reserve the tables with action-oriented AI assistants.
And we could see more of this processing taking place on-device, keeping your data private and the ability for the AI to work without an internet connection, reducing the reliance on the cloud.
