The 2026 NAB Show is officially underway. The Las Vegas Convention Center opened its doors this morning to a show floor packed with new camera bodies, fresh post-production software, AI-powered workflow tools and more IP-based production gear than any year prior. The renovated Central Hall has given exhibitors meaningfully more space. Booths feel less cramped. Demos have room to breathe, and the traffic jams of past years are largely gone.
Plenty of announcements dropped in the days leading up to the show. Others are being held for main-stage reveals between now and Wednesday. Here’s where to point your attention on the floor this week.
Cameras
NAB is still where the biggest camera announcements land. A few manufacturers have spread their launches across the calendar, but the show pulls the biggest crowds when a new body hits a booth floor.
Sony’s Cinema Line is one of the most talked-about stories heading into the week. The FX3 has carried independent filmmakers since its debut, but pressure from Canon’s EOS C50 and Nikon’s Zr has been building. The FX3 II is the anchor of the Sony booth this year. It’s built around a 24-megapixel (MP) stacked sensor with triple base ISO, and 6K recording tops out at 120 frames per second (fps). Open gate shooting is part of the package. Sony also brought its 2026 firmware roadmap for existing Cinema Line cameras to Vegas. An FX6 v6.0 update shipped in February with a new quick-access menu system worth checking out if you own the camera.
Canon walks in with real momentum. The EOS R6 Mark III landed last year to strong reviews. Earlier in 2026 the company added the RF 7-14mm F2.8-3.5 L Fisheye zoom along with the RF 14mm F1.4 L VCM prime. Both moves point to Canon building out its ecosystem for cinematic shooters who want native wide-angle glass without third-party adapters. The Cinema EOS area is worth a return visit midweek. Budget shooters are watching closely for news on refreshed APS-C bodies in the R-series.
Blackmagic Design is one of the most anticipated exhibitors at the show every year. The company is famously secretive. Last year’s PYXIS 12K reveal was a highlight and built on the original full-frame 6K PYXIS. This year, the company’s bringing URSA Cine Immersive 100G for Apple Immersive Video (and ATEM 4 M/E Constellation IP switchers) That’s a lot to be excited about.
Nikon is on the floor with a bigger cinema story than last year. The Z-mount Zr paired Nikon’s hybrid DNA with RED’s R3D codec at a price that undercut the competition. A more serious cinema follow-up with professional connectivity would land hard. Nikon also confirmed earlier this year that it’s developing dedicated cinema lenses, a move that signals a long-term commitment to the category.
PTZOptics Move 4K with Horizon – Sponsored
PTZOptics’ Move 4K with Horizon has arrived as a fully realized, intelligent video solution built for today’s evolving production workflows. The Move 4K series delivers crisp, broadcast-quality 4K video alongside flexible connectivity options and dependable performance across applications ranging from broadcast to corporate AV.
The addition of Horizon elevates the system with a browser-based control platform that centralizes camera management, automation and integration. Users can monitor and control cameras remotely without dedicated hardware, simplifying setup while expanding operational flexibility.
Together, Move 4K and Horizon introduce a smarter approach to production. Features such as intelligent auto-tracking, automated workflows and ongoing software updates enable systems to adapt over time, reducing manual intervention and increasing efficiency.
Part of PTZOptics’ broader Visual Reasoning initiative, the platform also highlights the growing role of AI, robotics and cloud technologies in video. With capabilities like event-driven triggers, automated indexing and enhanced search, Move 4K with Horizon positions itself as a forward-looking solution for teams seeking more responsive, scalable and connected video environments.
Post-production software
Blackmagic used the run-up to the show to drop DaVinci Resolve 21. The headline addition is a Photo page, the first time the company has brought Hollywood-grade color tools to still photography. It supports native RAW from Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon and Sony cameras. Colorists can apply the same node workflow they use on motion work. Photographers can reframe and crop at source resolution. Albums handle media organization, and live camera tethering brings shoot-day capture into the app. Whether working photographers actually adopt it is an open question. The ambition is hard to miss.
Everything else in 21 reads like a deep feature release. More than 100 new motion graphic effects land on top of 50 additional features. Hundreds of quality-of-life improvements round out the update. The AI toolset picks up IntelliSearch, which speeds up content searching across a project. CineFocus lets editors push focal point adjustments after the fact. The cut and edit pages got better keyframing plus wider graphic format support. Fusion added Krokodove, a new toolset with more than 70 graphics. Fairlight’s folder function cleans up audio track management. Resolve FX gained UltraSharpen, which applies high-quality sharpening to moving video that can salvage footage with mild focus errors. Studio is still $295.
Adobe didn’t sit this one out. The company unveiled Color Mode for Premiere ahead of the show as a public beta. It’s a dedicated color-grading workspace built inside Premiere rather than a panel tacked onto the edit interface. Three years in development, it runs at 32-bit color depth for the first time in Premiere history. NVIDIA RTX and RTX PRO GPUs handle the acceleration. Traditional three-tier grading gives way to six independent luminance zones. Most controls are bidirectional, so a single mouse move can drive two parameters at once. It’s the clearest shot Adobe has taken at DaVinci Resolve in years.
Color Mode ships alongside the Premiere 26.2 update. That release also adds Film Impact-powered effects and transitions, Object Masking with Sharp and Smooth edge options, plus a searchable Sequence Index panel for complex timelines. Adobe rolled out Frame.io Drive at the same time, a desktop app that mounts Frame.io projects locally so editors can work as if the media lives on their hard drive. The NLE fight between Resolve and Premiere has rarely been this direct. Editors win either way.
OWC Express 4M2 Ultra – Sponsored
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AI as a production tool
AI dominated the conversation at NAB 2025. This year the talk has shifted from potential to practical deployment. The show has doubled down by adding a second AI Innovation Pavilion to the floor. That expansion reflects how quickly AI has moved from experimental demos into real-world broadcast workflows.
Google Cloud and Google DeepMind are presenting a session called “The Augmented Studio” that digs into how AI is reshaping creative workflows across production and editing. Microsoft is hosting its own session on moving AI from early experimentation to real-world impact in media organizations. These aren’t vendor pitches tucked into side rooms. They’re keynote-level programming.
On the product side, Moments Lab is demonstrating agentic AI tools that let editors search entire media libraries using conversational prompts. Its Discovery Agent surfaces relevant clips along with precise moments, no manual tagging required. Native panels for Avid Media Composer and DaVinci Resolve cut out the manual EDL step entirely. That kind of time savings adds up fast on deadline work.
FOR-A is making one of the bolder statements at this year’s show. The Japanese broadcast equipment manufacturer has pivoted its entire booth to software-defined, AI-driven solutions. That’s a dramatic shift for a company that has exhibited hardware at NAB since 1980. Its IMPULSE platform consolidates switching, graphics, audio mixing and media playback. Everything runs as software on GPU-powered servers. Its viztrick AiDi tool is already deployed by NBC Sports for real-time 9:16 auto-cropping on live broadcasts streamed to mobile platforms.
AWS is pushing hard into cloud-based media workflows with AI at the core. Its Elemental Inference service applies AI in parallel with live video encoding to automatically produce vertical cuts. With Gen Z viewers consuming most streaming content on smartphones, that capability answers a growing pain point for broadcasters who previously needed dedicated teams for vertical production.
IP production and cloud workflows
The shift from baseband to IP-based production infrastructure has been a recurring NAB theme for years. In 2026 it’s less a future promise than a present reality. NDI 6.3 is out in the wild. SMPTE ST 2110 adoption continues to grow. The floor conversation has moved toward interoperability along with reducing vendor lock-in.
Riedel Communications brought several notable products this year. The “hi” human interface is a browser-based control system that manages routers, multiviewers and mixers through a single vendor-agnostic tool. It works across baseband and IP. The Bolero Mini is making its U.S. debut this week as the company’s lightest wireless intercom beltpack yet. Riedel’s SAME audio processing suite, built on commercial-off-the-shelf server hardware, rounds out the booth.
Magewell unveiled its Pro Convert IP to AIO 4K decoder ahead of the show. It supports 4K output at 60 fps over HDMI 2.0 and 12G-SDI. The input side handles NDI, SRT, RTMP and RIST. For facilities in the middle of an SDI-to-IP transition, products like this smooth a messy path.
Cloud-native production is a headline theme of the conference as well. Sessions on scalable virtual production, hybrid broadcast-broadband delivery and cloud-based content creation make up a dedicated Enterprise Video Strategies track new for 2026. The Sports Summit has expanded to four days, a reflection of how much live sports production is driving technology investment right now. With the FIFA World Cup and Winter Olympics both on the 2026 calendar, broadcasters are shopping for modular remote production kits. They also need low-latency 4K streaming tools that can hold up under massive concurrent audiences, plus AI-enhanced fan engagement platforms.
Audio gear and accessories
Cameras get the headlines, but audio earns real attention at NAB. Sennheiser recently launched the MKH 8018, a compact shotgun microphone built for broadcast work and on-set production. The MKH line has a loyal following among location sound mixers. A new addition to that family pulls crowds.
RØDE has been on a product blitz. The RØDECaster Video Core announcement generated serious buzz in the creator community. Wireless microphone systems keep multiplying across every price tier. Expect updated transmitter-receiver combos from several manufacturers aimed squarely at the solo creator market. Hollyland’s Pyro Ultra wireless video system is on the floor this week, delivering 4K60 at roughly 22 ms latency with unlimited receivers. That’s the kind of iterative improvement that makes NAB worth the trip for working professionals who need practical upgrades.
SmallRig continues expanding its cage and rigging ecosystem. The company’s Nikon Z5 II cage is one example of how fast accessory makers respond to new camera bodies. Rigging companies typically use NAB to show prototypes and early production runs for gear that won’t be widely available for months. ZEISS is showing its recently introduced Aatma lens line, a set of nine high-end full-frame T1.5 cinema primes. Premium glass like that targets high-end productions. Its release signals continued investment in dedicated cinema optics at a moment when some lens makers are pivoting toward hybrid photo-video designs.
iodyne Pro Mini – Sponsored
This year’s focus for iodyne is developing an edge-friendly data backbone for productions. iodyne is releasing Pro Mini, the world’s first Smart Drive, designed to capture, move, and protect content in the field. Available in 4TB and 8TB, pocket-sized Pro Mini combines encryption, hardware RAID-6, solid-state cooling for sustained performance, and intelligent features: Digital Display, Passkeys, NFC Tap to Unlock, and Find My tracking.
When paired with Pro Data (up to 192TB), the result is a compact system that helps teams work predictably under pressure, from shooting and processing data on location, to bringing assets back safely for post.
Immersive video and large-format imaging
Immersive content production has carved out serious real estate on the show floor. Blackmagic’s URSA Cine Immersive camera, designed to capture Apple Immersive Video, sits at the bleeding edge of consumer-facing immersive workflows. Paired with DaVinci Resolve’s immersive editing capabilities, the camera gives creators a complete pipeline for spatial video.
One of the more intriguing sessions on the week’s schedule explores imaging at Sphere Entertainment’s Las Vegas venue. Andrew Shulkind, Sphere’s SVP of capture and innovation, will discuss the Big Sky camera system alongside SMPTE president Rich Welsh. Ultra-high-resolution imaging for large-format venues is still a niche field. The technical challenges involved push forward innovations that eventually trickle down into mainstream production tools.
DaVinci Resolve’s 32K workflow support on Apple M5 hardware opens up new possibilities for VR along with immersive content creation. Most productions won’t work at those resolutions anytime soon. The infrastructure is being laid now for workflows that become commonplace in a few years.
Lexar 8TB ARMOR 700 Portable SSD – Sponsored
Perfect for professional photographers, videographers, and content creators, the new 8TB ARMOR 700 Portable SSD delivers max speeds of 2000MB/s read/write and plenty of room to store massive amounts of RAW photos and 4K video. It is built for travel with a dust- and water-defying IP66 rating and a rugged design that withstands any adventure and offers extensive compatibility – including PC, Mac, Android, iPhone 15 series, camera, gaming consoles, and more.
The bigger picture
The Creator Lab, co-presented with Adobe and Blackmagic Design, reflects NAB’s continued push to attract digital-first content creators alongside traditional broadcast engineers. Sessions on measuring creator impact, navigating contracts and avoiding burnout acknowledge that the audience for professional video tools has expanded well beyond the broadcast booth.
Sir Roger Deakins is appearing at the CineCentral stage this week. Markiplier, who recently expanded into feature filmmaking, is presenting at the Creator Lab. That range of speakers says everything about where the industry stands right now.
Whether you’re shopping for your next A-camera, sizing up AI tools for your post workflow or just trying to keep up with how fast things are moving, NAB 2026 has something on the floor for you. The show runs through Wednesday, April 22 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
