The 2026 NAB Show is taking shape as a significant departure from the recent past as organizers take advantage of the newly renovated Las Vegas Convention Center to highlight maturing trend lines that are defining where the industry is going with greater clarity than ever.
“The 2026 NAB Show reflects a broader shift in the industry itself,” Karen Chupka, executive vice president of global connections and events at the National Association of Broadcasters, said. Noting registrations for the event running April 18-22 “are pacing well ahead of the past few years, including the post-COVID rebound in 2023,” Chupka said. “Our focus is not simply scale, but relevance, delivering measurable value for decision-makers navigating economic headwinds, global uncertainty and rapid technological change.”
New Home for TV and Radio
In the traditional TV broadcast realm, a welcome shift toward more favorable winds has put station owners in a far better state of mind than when massive tariff and economic uncertainty swept through last year’s gathering. Fittingly, NAB Show organizers have taken advantage of the post-renovation reopening of the Central Hall to create a more prominent presence for what they’re calling the “reimagined TV and Radio HQ,” with sponsorship support from Xperi.
Previously housed as the Broadcast District in West Hall conference rooms, the reimagined HQ features a dedicated theater with fast-paced, high-impact sessions on the future of TV, radio and audio storytelling, alongside an NAB Member Lounge designed for networking and peer exchange, according to Chupka.
“Companies serving broadcasters will be clustered around the HQ, strengthening community and commerce,” she said. “New workforce development programming will address AI, evolving talent models and organizational strategy, equipping leaders to navigate industry transformation.”
There are many factors contributing to the upbeat sense of possibility that, as previously reported, was widely expressed by TV station group executives in recent Q3 2025 earnings calls with analysts. Perhaps most notably, this year’s NAB Show comes amid significant demonstrations in Washington that industry expectations for regulatory relief, especially regarding TV-station ownership rules and more spectrum availability for ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV), are well-placed.
Evidence for at least a marginally brighter future for broadcast TV is showing up in research reports anchored by new trends in consumer behavior. For example, while Nielsen reported TV viewing of internet-streamed programming reached an all-time high in December, it said a growing share of streaming consumption in 82% of U.S. households involves broadcast station programming delivered over virtual MVPD services and free ad-supported TV (FAST) channels.
AI Becoming ‘Fundamental’
With affordability taking a mounting toll on streamed subscription services, as reported by Parks Associates, OTA TV penetration as tabulated by nScreen Media reached 16.3% in 2025, marking a 23% increase over 2024. According to a recent report from S&P Global, the 2026 political year rebound abetted by the FIFA World Cup and the Winter Olympics should see a 13.1% year-to-year increase to $24.67 billion in total station ad revenue, with the take growing at an average annual rate of 1.5% to reach $25.25 billion by 2030.
“I think there’s a lot of optimism in the air,” Renard Jenkins, president and CEO
of AI-oriented consultancy I2A2 Technologies, Studios & Labs, said. The sense of growing opportunity has a lot to do with progress in the industry’s ability to put AI to use, said Jenkins, a SMPTE board member and past president who also serves as president of the Hollywood Professional Association and as newly named chairman of the HAND Universal Talent Identifier, a public registry aimed at combating AI fakery.
Broadcasters have entered a new phase of AI convergence, he noted. Abetted by a long-standing foundation in machine learning (ML), modular approaches to AI as opposed to “one-hit wonders” are becoming a “fundamental part” of industry workflows that enable companies to “make the turns and shifts” essential to remaining competitive.
“AI is no longer a standalone topic,” Chupka agreed, noting it will be “embedded across workflows, programming and exhibitor demonstrations” at the show to reveal how AI infrastructure powers the ways “content is created, protected, distributed and monetized.” With two pavilions devoted to the topic, AI is paired with media asset protection as one of five primary points of focus, which also include the creator economy, streaming, cloud virtualization and sports.
“One of the big innovations is increasingly there’s more and more AI, not just in postproduction, but using AI for camera tracking and image capture within the event,” noted Duane Yoslov, senior vice president at systems integrator Diversified. “Some of the AI camera robotic tracking technology is really impressive and some of the shots we’re getting from the athletes in this Olympics have never been done before.”
Vendor interoperability across multiple operational categories has been a major theme at the past few NAB Shows, marked by a growing set of new standards that leverage software and cloud environments to break with past vendor lock-in tied to purpose-built equipment.
For example, this year marks the U.S. introduction of products certified compliant with the Alliance for IP Media Solutions’ (AIMS) new Internet Protocol Media Experience (IPMX) standard, created in collaboration with the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) and the Video Service Forum (VSF).
As described by Macnica Americas product management director Andrew Starks, an AIMS board member who chairs its marketing working group, IPMX implements a standard-based approach to ensuring vendor interoperability in SMPTE ST 2110 production and playout workflows in compressed or uncompressed modes with uncompressed A/V transmissions at up to 4K resolutions and 60 frames per second over single-gigabit networks, along with an AMWA Networked Media Open Specifications (NMOS) control layer enabling device discovery and control without reliance on proprietary control systems.
ISE 2026 in Barcelona in February marked the “starting gun” for IPMX, with the first products launched that support the standard.
“IPMX doesn’t reinvent technology, it simply adds features that make the transition to IP more user friendly,” Starks said. With 58 products now IPMX-certified representing a “good mix of gateways and displays” and a much larger batch of certifications expected following a round of testing in May, AIMS will conduct 12 sessions at the West Hall tech station and kick off the first in a series of training sessions in a West Hall suite, Starks said. “We’re excited about what’s coming next,” he added.
Sports Focus
The push toward broadcast innovation is getting a lot of help from expert contractors like Diversified, which will be at the show with a focus on its experience designing and building experience-rich environments. One highlight will be the Diversified-built Fox Sports Jewel Event Fly Kit (FSJE), which Yoslov described as “a remote data center that can be broken down and loaded on pallets in the hold of an airplane and operational within six to eight hours.”
“After the 2022 World Cup, that same system was deployed for the Super Bowl, the Women’s World Cup, the Euros,” Yoslov said. “And now it’ll be used for the World Cup in 2026. We’re also currently commissioning an add-on called Brisk, Broadcast Remote IP Studio Kit, that will be duplicated six times for remote studios at every World Cup venue.”
The 2026 Winter Olympics were an especially prominent demonstration of the transformation in live sports coverage enabled by advanced production technology, in this case supplied by Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS). From its suite at the Encore Las Vegas, the company will be explaining how “Comcast Sports360 from Comcast Technology Solutions enables us to deliver the speed, quality, and reliability that Olympic coverage demands, supporting seamless, multiformat delivery across a wide range of platforms,” said Darryl Jefferson, senior vice president of engineering and technology for NBC Sports and Olympics.
As always, there will be some attendee opportunities for entertaining engagements on the show floor. Notably, where AI is concerned, AWS, which last year staged Formula One simulator races for attendee participation in the West Hall lobby, will be teaming this year with Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, owners of the NBA’s Toronto Raptors, to bring an AI-enabled digital basketball shooting experience to the 2026 NAB Show. As conveyed by a company spokesperson, “attendees can take three free throw shots that are instantly analyzed by MLSE’s biomechanical engine to generate a personalized digital player card with their shooting stats and visual persona.”
Public Broadcasting’s Future
Of course, amid the uptick in broadcast TV optimism, there’s the sour note sounded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) shutdown resulting from the cancellation of federal funding. But PBS and NPR operations at the national and local station levels remain intact with a variety of corporate, foundation and individual funding streams, which covered 85% and 90% of the national budgets, respectively, prior to the federal budget cut, according to a 2017 report from the Congressional Research Service.
While the most damaging squeeze is hitting small, rural public-TV and radio stations, many larger-market public stations are undaunted in their efforts to capitalize on technological advances. A particularly notable case in point can be found in Tucson, Ariz., where the University of Arizona-affiliated Arizona Public Media (AZPM) TV and radio stations reach about 20% of the state’s population.
AZPM is at the forefront of broadcast transformation with its recent move into the Paul and Alice Baker Center for Public Media, a $65 million, three-story facility housing state-of-the-art TV, radio and podcast studios, a flexible performance space for local productions and community events, and a digital conference center. The center is a “future-ready” environment that has virtually eliminated RF with all-digital production based on ST-2110, says AZPM Chief Technology Officer Ian MacSpadden, who has overseen the Baker Center project from the start.
“Wherever you are, you have full routable access to the content in the building” instead of “separate islands,” MacSpadden said. This means video- and/or audio-captured events in any of the performance and meeting spaces can be fed into studio production operations. “It’s more important now than ever to be part of the community and engage with them to show what their support means to everyone,” he added.
MacSpadden will be at NAB Show to “keep an eye on where vendors are going” and checking out what might be best-of-breed for whatever he needs next. AZPM is taking a “gen AI-lite” approach to the latest iterations of the technology with an eye toward expediting validation of new approaches to workflow refinements, including assessing the interoperability of new solutions that appear to be useful.
To register, visit NAB Show’s website.
