Why CES Isn’t Exciting Anymore

There was something off about CES this year. Almost everyone I talked to expressed the feeling that it wasn’t as good as it had been in previous years and that there has been a steady decline, which is a sentiment I share. But what has changed and why is CES less exciting than it used to be? Let’s dig into it.

COVID

One obvious explanation for the waning attitudes towards CES is the COVID-19 pandemic and its continuing ramifications.

2021 was the only in year that CES went full-digital. In 2022, it was a hybrid event that was shut down early due to a lack of general attendance, exhibitors pulling out, media choosing not participate in-person, and overall health concerns. In 2023, CES was back in full swing.

The last year before the pandemic, in 2020, there were 4,419 exhibitors and 171,268 attendees. This year, in 2026, there were approximately 4,100 exhibitors and 148,000 attendees.

So while it approached pre-pandemic levels, CES 2026 hasn’t fully recovered quite yet. But the truth is that attendance peaked back in 2017—not in 2020. Attendance numbers had already fallen. They wax and wane through the decades, which tells us that there is more to the story than a pandemic lull.

Tech booms and bursting bubbles

We can explain fluctuating attendance numbers, in part, as correlations with the hype cycles of noteworthy technologies. The dot-com boom, the rise of IoT and smart home tech, blockchains and crypto, and now AI.

Those have all created public interest, which drove attendance. As new technologies, they fostered a lot of rapid development and new products. Exciting new products bring in media and the general public, which attracts exhibitors. The cycle propagates itself.

We are now clearly in an AI bubble. I can’t tell you if that will burst or not. I can’t even tell you if we’re still on the ascending slope or if we’ve already crossed the peak. But I can tell you that a lot of the public and members of the media are experiencing AI fatigue.

I’ve felt that myself. I don’t hate AI, even as a writer with his livelihood at stake. I’ve simply lost interest. It feels like a repeat of IoT at its height, when every company on the planet attempted to make their products “smart,” whether those products benefitted from IoT capabilities or not.

Consumers simply don’t care if their toaster has AI. In fact, many consumers would prefer their toaster didn’t.

The end of the Digital Era

My personal belief is that this goes deeper than just exhaustion from another hype cycle. I think we’re seeing an overall decline in enthusiasm for digital technology.

There was a time when every new iPhone release was a major event. Now, most people can’t even tell you what version of the iPhone we’re on without looking it up. There was a time when a new CD player or TV model was a big deal. Now, hundreds of Bluetooth speakers and TVs come and go without anyone taking notice.

I see this as a shift from the Digital Era we’ve lived in for more than half a century to a burgeoning Data Era. Those in the industry referring to AI as the Fourth Industrial Revolution are backing up that idea. I don’t believe that our current LLM models are what will cement that revolution, but it is a step away from digital hardware and towards more intangible products — something we’ve been seeing for years with apps, subscription models, tech “platforms,” and more.

After all, why does the hardware matter when any decent device can access the platforms being pushed? Smartphones, TVs, stereos, computers, and other staples of the tech industry become bulk commodities, rather than products to be excited about in their own right.

This shift seems particularly prevalent among younger generations. Paradoxically, they seem to use their devices more than older generations, while also caring less about those devices. That makes perfect sense when you see those devices as commodities that aren’t inherently more exciting than USB cables or toilet paper.

Where do we go from here?

That march into the Data Era may very well be inevitable, with CES transitioning into a showcase of software, cloud services, autonomous capabilities, and AI models. The market will take the industry wherever it leads, regardless of how tech enthusiasts feel about it.

I think there will always be a place for enthusiasts of what we call “tech” today, just like there are still enthusiasts of steam engines, traditional woodworking, and even stone tools. We’re already seeing a resurgence of interest in analog technology and “dumb” digital technology, like film cameras and old-school MP3 players, among young people. That may be a simple fad — anemoia for retro tech. But it could represent a deeper displeasure with modern technology.

In either case, there will be opportunities for companies to cater to those markets and opportunities for us to report on them. That may become the equivalent of attending a blacksmithing tradeshow, but it will still exist in some form, even if CES continues its downward trend as consumer electronics as an industry grows less relevant.