CES 2026 doesn’t officially start until Jan. 6, but if you’re a regular Gizmodo reader, you already know that it started unofficially. Like every year, companies start releasing previews and announcements of partial products at the end of December, weeks before the biggest tech show opens its doors in Las Vegas. Be sure to follow our CES 2026 live blog to see all the things our consumer tech team will be checking out firsthand.
I have a strong feeling that CES 2026 will be much more crowded than everyone expects. Six years after the pandemic, it seems to me—based on early announcements—that the show is finally roaring back to life. Invigorated by the promise of AI—whether automation, generative, agent, or some other form—companies are daring to shoot for the moon again. So what are the biggest trends to expect from the biggest tech innovation show of the year? I could be wrong in the end, but let me look into my crystal ball and see if I can connect some dots.
The AI will not run away
More than any CES show in years, we’ll see AI infused into every gadget imaginable. Samsung, LG, Lenovo, Razer—all the big attendees and little-known startups will boast about why some form of AI will make their products better. Some of the AI applications can legitimately move the needle; most will be AI features because of AI features, over-promising and under-delivering.
As journalists, we’ll spend our days at CES 2026 wading through the AI minefield of intelligence sprinkled across laptops, mobile devices, home appliances, transportation, and more. In the same way that Wi-Fi has been added to almost every gadget, AI will wiggle its way in even if you don’t want it to.
Do you really need AI in your washing machine or refrigerator? How many times has a major electronics company tried to convince us at a packed press conference that we need a new home appliance to figure out how to cook food with leftover ingredients? The most useful AI jobs will be those that are invisible and that AI, LLMs, or chatbots work invisibly in the background to make our lives easier.
A sea of smart glasses
If you’re looking at a bunch of smart glasses, including Meta’s Ray-Ban Display, last year it’s anything but a sign of what to expect in 2026, it’s that there will be smart glasses to come.
As if the Next Big Thing after smartphones, every company seems to be trying to figure out how to sell smart glasses. How do you balance style and service while making it worth the early adoption costs and AI into it to keep up with the latest trends? Meta might make you think he’s found some magic recipe, but he really hasn’t. A single pair of smart glasses with solid screens, cameras, battery life, speakers, AI, and apps is still the holy grail that everyone is chasing.
Currently, smart glasses still have a lot of trade-offs. It’s also unclear whether consumers even want smart glasses that do it all. That’s why we’ve seen so many flavors of smart glasses—with mono and dual-lens waveguide screens, no cameras (for privacy, naturally) at all, or simple “AI glasses” that are as efficient at taking photos and videos and playing music as a pair of open-ear headphones. Then there are video glasses from the likes of Xreal that boil over XR functions to allow them to offer the computer-like features you’d find in XR or VR headsets.
I do not expect that any blueprint for smart glasses will appear at the end of CES 2026, only that the variety of designs and offerings will expand beyond what we have already seen shipped. There will be more smart glasses than XR and VR headsets. The metaverse is dead; AI is now the new hotness.
TV technology is also important
OK, maybe consumers won’t care what micro RGB or WOLED means, but TV makers will be pushing hard to make their latest display technology seem like a must-have when they finally ship with true flat screens.
Don’t worry that you might not understand how the backlight technology works or that your weak eyes can’t see wide dynamic range, extended HDR, high contrast, or extra brightness. CES 2026 will advance TV technology as it has done for more than 50 years. The show wouldn’t be the same if you weren’t flying on the gle pixels.
I’ll be keeping a close eye on how much AI is forced into new TVs and what companies choose to integrate AI into. Google’s Gemini will no doubt replace the old Google Assistant, but I really want to see how much AI slop there will be. My guess is that there will be an uncomfortable amount of AI slop doing something useful. Multiple AI screens—sorry, canvas art. Added AI to create fake frames to make watching sports and gaming smoother, but it looks worse when watching movies and TV shows due to motion blur.
Speaking of high frame rates, I have to wonder how the top TV makers will go with the refresh rates? 120Hz, 165Hz, and 240Hz are already pushing the gaming envelope, but don’t be surprised if there are plenty of TVs with much higher native (and artificially enhanced) refresh rates just to outdo the competition in a single sheet battle.
EVs and mobility are taking over
Everyone knows that CES is not a car show, but it’s also impossible to ignore the entire hall of EVs, automotive technology, and movement at the Las Vegas Convention Center. As a bit new, there will be more of everything. Most EVs have ridiculously high speeds, long ranges, and displays plastered all over the interior; many e-bikes and e-scooters blur the line with motorcycles; and wacky flying cars and human quadcopters that will promise to hit the skies (but probably never will).
When zooming in directly, what I noticed is that there will be a tendency to go back on the car’s tactile controls. Ten years ago, Tesla made dashboards and touchscreen controls ubiquitous, but automakers and consumers are now realizing that fancy buttons never needed—and probably shouldn’t—be removed.
Personally, I welcome this return of thought. Aside from giving the cars more variety and character, the body’s buttons, dials, and knobs are actually easier to use when driving. Who would have thought that turning a dial to adjust the volume or the air conditioner is faster than tapping a few layers on a touch screen layer?
And of course, like all other connected devices at CES 2026, I’m sure we’ll see AI crowded into the dashboard and more promises of self-driving technology.
Here are the home droids
It’s not that the smart home won’t have a big presence at the show—it will—but it’s currently being retooled with AI, so it won’t sound too shabby. Google Assistant is being replaced by Gemini and Alexa with Alexa+. This “improvement” is far behind, but as we’ve seen testing the first batch of products powered by these super-smart voice assistants, the smart part hasn’t arrived yet. When you need consumers to use two different modes—one for smart home control and one for more conversational AI—as you do with Gemini, it’s a sobering reminder that rebranding is still a big work in progress.
What should be most interesting on the smart home front is seeing intelligence meet robots inside the home. Yes, I’m talking about humanoid robots that can lift things and do household chores, and even fancy robot vacuums 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 available commercially at any affordable prices anytime soon, but at least they should give us an idea of how close we are to the sci-fi dream of having a real-life C-3PO do what we want.
More of the standard consumer technology
Those are the big trends I expect to see at CES 2026. On a pure hardware level, the show will be filled with new laptops and mainstream PCs, home entertainment systems (TVs and speakers), wearables, audio (wireless headphones and wireless earbuds), cameras, transportation (EVs, e-bikes, e-scooters), and mobile accessories and computer peripherals. Gadget heaven, if you will.
By the end of the show, Gizmodo’s shopping team will be tired and hungry, but we’ll have had the full spectacle of it all. CES is the best place to preview the future. Or rather, ideas of what the future looks like.
