With more than 850 exhibitors spread across roughly one million square feet of show floor, last week’s PRINTING United Expo 2026 promised to be a treasure trove of innovation, excitement and everything in the world of print.
Held at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the event brought together commercial print, wide-format, labels and packaging, apparel, industrial print, promotional products and more. Inevitably, there were hundreds of launches, demonstrations and announcements.
Beyond the individual product launches, however, came some threads that connected the industry in a much more substantial way. From artificial intelligence and automation to embellishment and diversification, here are five things that caught Digital Printer’s attention from this year’s show.
1. AI has got the job
Perhaps the most noticeable development was not simply the amount of AI being discussed (no surprises there), but the increasingly practical nature of its applications.
HP, for example, introduced new AI capabilities for its PrintOS Production Hub, including AI Order Intake, designed to turn incoming customer emails and files into orders, and AI Upscale for improving low-resolution images. Its new Latex R530 AI Printer will also gain an Automatic Print Mode Selection feature, designed to recommend the appropriate balance between image quality and throughput.
Fiery’s JobFlow Pro, meanwhile, uses AI to analyse job content, apply appropriate presets and route files through production, alongside the company’s broader range of digital front ends, colour management and automation tools. Xerox also put AI and automation among the themes surrounding its expanded production portfolio.
But perhaps the more interesting conversation was about what happens before things go to print.
We spoke with Adobe, and the company highlighted the loss of experienced prepress personnel as one of the problems automation can help address. Its Print Services technologies are intended for integration by OEMs and DFE developers, using automated analysis and correction to tackle problems in incoming files before they reach production.
The event’s PRINTING AI programme also focused on the need for print businesses to capture institutional knowledge currently held by experienced employees.
Taken together, it suggests that the industry’s AI conversation is beginning to mature. The interesting question is becoming less “what can generative AI create?” and more “which everyday production problems can AI actually remove?”
2. Automation is becoming a workforce strategy
That leads to our second takeaway. Automation at PRINTING United went beyond simply making equipment run faster, becoming increasingly about reducing the amount of specialist human intervention required to keep work moving.
Examples could be found throughout the workflow, from automated file preparation and job routing to colour management, press set-up and unattended production.
ECO3 provided a particularly striking real-world example. C.J. Urban, vice president of operations at California-based Inland Group, said: “We’ve grown about 10% every year using ECO3 APOGEE automation software, without adding to our workforce.”
That is a useful illustration of what vendors across the show are ultimately selling: not automation for its own sake, but the ability to increase output without necessarily increasing staffing at the same rate.
HP’s new workflow developments similarly aim to connect stages from order intake through to print, while Fiery’s JobFlow Pro uses AI-assisted automation to analyse jobs and route them through production with less operator oversight.
Against the industry’s familiar backdrop of recruitment and skills challenges, automation is therefore becoming as much a workforce discussion as a technology one.
3. Taking cost out is only half the equation
If automation is about producing work more efficiently, another conspicuous theme at PRINTING United was about making that work worth more.
Specialty colour and embellishment appeared repeatedly.
Xerox’s newly announced Proficio PX700 FLX supports up to six colours inline and adds Fluorescent Green to its specialty toner capabilities, while enhancements to the PX300 and PX500 introduce further Beyond CMYK options including Gold, Silver and White.
Konica Minolta, meanwhile, introduced Embellishment Forge in collaboration with Adobe, intended to make it easier for designers to explore and specify print embellishment.
Adobe’s Naveen Goel described the commercial problem the companies are attempting to solve: “Decorative effects are too technical for most designers to spec into a job.”
There were signs of demand beyond individual product launches, too. The show’s guided Embellishment Technology Tour expanded to include separate Digital Production and Wide Format tracks this year, with the Digital Production track selling out ahead of the event.
The significance of all of this goes beyond another collection of metallics, fluorescents and special effects. Manufacturers are increasingly trying to make embellishment easier to design, sell and produce – potentially moving it from specialist knowledge towards a more routine part of digital print production, and increasing margins along with it.
Automation is helping printers take cost and labour out of production; embellishment is being positioned as a way of putting value back into the finished product.
4. The boundaries between markets continue to blur
Convergence has been part of PRINTING United’s proposition for years, but the 2026 show demonstrated just how broad that idea has become.
Packaging was a particularly prominent diversification opportunity, but dedicated areas also targeted apparel decoration, promotional products and installation. The debut ASI Pavilion, for example, was explicitly intended to connect print service providers with opportunities in promotional products, while the Apparel Zone provided hands-on access to garment decoration technologies.
The same crossover was visible among exhibitors.
Companies traditionally associated with one area of print increasingly presented technology applicable across several. Wide-format portfolios stretch towards industrial and direct-to-object applications. Commercial printers are being encouraged towards packaging and embellishment. And software suppliers increasingly want to connect multiple production processes rather than occupy one isolated part of them.
Indeed, PRINTING United Alliance’s own post-show assessment described the event as reflecting the ‘continued convergence of print markets’.
For printers considering diversification, the message from Las Vegas was therefore not necessarily to abandon their core market. It was that the number of adjacent markets accessible through digital production continues to increase.
5. Inkjet’s territory is still expanding
Xerox provided one of the show’s more significant production print announcements with a substantial expansion of its portfolio.
The new Proficio Jet CS1100 is a B3 cut-sheet inkjet press rated at up to 300 images per minute, supporting media up to 350gsm, including coated stocks. It was joined by the Proficio Jet CF1200 continuous-feed inkjet press, rated at up to 525ft/min.
And the company also introduced the six-colour toner-based Proficio PX700 FLX and expanded the specialty colour capabilities of its PX300 and PX500.
Inkjet continues to push into a wider range of applications, while toner presses are simultaneously becoming more automated and adding capabilities intended to increase the value of their output.
All of this represents an increasingly wide and diverse production toolbox.
The industry’s technology suppliers are tackling both sides of the profitability equation: reducing the labour, time and expertise required to produce a job while simultaneously providing more applications, effects and markets through which printers can generate revenue.
AI, automation, embellishment, convergence and expanding inkjet capability may look like separate technology stories. From Las Vegas, however, they increasingly appeared to be different answers to the same question: how can print businesses do more with the resources they already have?
