Leif Lindner isn’t hedging. “Artificial intelligence is no longer just a promise,” said the CEO of IFA Management. “Smart homes are no longer a vision. Digital health is becoming part of everyday life… The future is not waiting somewhere five or 10 years away. It is already in our homes, in our pockets, in our cars, in our health routines.”
That’s the pitch for IFA 2026, and it doubles as the show’s organizing principle. AI isn’t a booth at the far end of the hall this year. It’s the wiring.
The show that eats every other tech show
IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin) is the world’s biggest home and consumer tech event. It happens in Berlin, and it pulls in brands like Samsung, Acer, Anker, Eufy and Hisense, all in one place, all showing off new consumer gadgets and products. Gaming tech sits next to home tech. Wherever you wander, there’s something worth stopping for.
The 2026 theme is AI and digital health, and the show’s framing is that AI has “stopped being its own category and started becoming the connective tissue underneath everything else.” That covers beauty, preventative health tools, connected fitness, wellness tech and beauty devices, all of it pointing at consumers who want tech that “supports a more personalized, healthier daily routine.”
What the last few years actually delivered
Track record matters here. At IFA 2024, Acer announced the Nitro Blaze 7, its answer to the Steam Deck OLED and the Asus ROG Ally X.
Then 2025 turned into a home tech parade. Eufy brought its MarsWalker robot vacs and UV printers. Anker rolled out the Soundcore Nebula X1 Pro, a high-end projector that is not-so-portable in the most literal sense: it arrives on wheels, pushes 3,500 ANSI lumens and carries Dolby surround sound. For scale, the portable Nebula Capsule maxes out at 300 lumens.
The robots keep getting weirder
Last year’s crowd favorite was the KATA Friend AI pet, an advanced digital pet that people kept circling back to. Every show brings robots nobody has seen before, across nearly every category you can name.
Some are cute. Others are built for actual routines, like a stair-climbing robot vacuum. And then there’s the Acemate Tennis Robot, billed as the world’s first AI-powered robot capable of true, real-time play.
Six perspectives, one building
Part of what makes IFA odd in a good way is who’s standing next to you. Attendees and people following remotely get to see these shifts through the lens of a global CEO, a retailer, a startup founder, a content creator, a journalist and a consumer. Few events put all of those in the same room.
The after-hours lineup is real
There’s also a building coming back from the dead. The ICC Berlin, a protected 1979 landmark shuttered for over a decade, reopens for IFA 2026, adding more room for attendees to engage with what’s on offer.
Who gets in
Our tech team will be on the ground in Berlin, standing somewhere between a tennis-playing robot and a projector on wheels, waiting to see what walks out next.
