IFA 2026. Only the Familiar Machines Show Their Insides

In one hall at IFA, a curved white wall is built like an amphitheatre, and the seats are taken by appliances. Washing machines and air purifiers stand at the bottom behind stanchions. Above them sit ovens, air conditioners, coffee machines, robot vacuums and speakers, and in the middle, in lit letters, it says THE SURGING WAVE OF AI. Without meaning to, the wall sums up the fair, because once AI is written on everything, the word no longer tells one thing from another. IFA 2026 presents its robots as party tricks and pets. The machines that do real work stand at the edges, and there is no stand for the shift that actually matters.

Monday 7 September is the fourth of five days. MESSE BERLIN runs in capitals across the rotunda at the entrance, with Haier, Midea and Xiaomi hung above it and the fair's motto alongside: Innovation for all. The press badge carries the address of this website under the name, with PRESS beside it. Inside, the halls are numbered like maths homework: 3² Communication & Connectivity, 5² with the iZone and the Dream Stage for the Innovation Award, 6² Computing & Gaming, with an Indie Game Area where people show their own games on folding tables. Four shuttle lines run between them.

The labels are far less orderly. What stands out is how many different things carry the letters AI. At one stand, glasses rest on illuminated ring stands, with AI Agent and AI Cueing on the wall behind. At XbotGo, AI Sports Tracking means a camera that follows a football. At Siemens a system called i-Dos measures out the detergent. Whether on glasses, a camera or a detergent doser, the label tells you how a device is sold. It does not tell you what the device can do.

The crowds gather around the humanoids. In one press shot from RoboCup, a robot in a blue bib numbered 3 dribbles across green artificial turf as children and adults lean on the barrier. In another, a white humanoid scoops popcorn from a machine in front of three rows of raised phones. A third shows a robot with T800 on its chest boxing visitors in a small ring, under a wall advertising a pocket-sized AI exoskeleton. RoboCup ran in Hall 15 on all five days. So the demonstrations come down to a dribble, a jab and a cup of popcorn, all tricks, and none of it housework.

The devices that get something done keep a lower profile. Dreame has built a living room with a sofa and a stacked washer-dryer. A humanoid in a black-and-grey shell stands in it, next to two robot vacuums with extending arms and laundry baskets as props. The vacuum was the one that moved, while the humanoid stood. That makes the casting clearer than the set intends. The machine that looks like an appliance does the work, and the human-shaped one is modelling.

The household robot is sold as a pet, as company. The ollobot sits alone on a white plinth behind two velvet ropes, against a holographic wall of collectible cards and the line NEXT GENERATION OF CYBER PET. At SwitchBot, plush robots called KATA Friends sit on pedestals among handbags, and a sign offers exclusive gifts for at least three photos or a video posted online. So the visitors get to do the advertising. One section at Dreame is called Smart Pet Appliances.

Tuya lays out developer boards and a small red robot arm, and the sign calls it all a Flagship Multi-Modal Interaction Platform. Above one aisle a Nanoleaf display counts the automations running right now, and there are more than a million. Another exhibitor advertises an AI Workflow Controller. Nobody puts velvet ropes around stands like these, although this is where the shift that matters is happening. Whoever supplies the platform decides later what the devices may do.

Bosch puts a glass dishwasher on a plinth and runs it. Water hits the pane and the racks show through. Siemens shows a cutaway washer-dryer, drum and hoses exposed, with a sign on the control panel: Do not touch. The robots, by contrast, are closed shells, black or white, and there is nothing to see in them. At this fair, the machines you can look inside are the familiar ones, and the new ones stay shut.

At half past five the mobility test area outside was empty, with barriers carrying IFA banners and the brick hall behind them. Above the entrance hall hangs a Miele banner: The end of housework is in sight. The sentence is about as old as the fair. After a day here, the end has got as far as a robot vacuum with an arm. The humanoid beside it is still waiting for its cue.

IFA 2026 was at Messe Berlin from 4 to 8 September.

Photographs: the author's own, plus IFA Management GmbH and Dominik Tryba, Introduce Productions, for IFA Berlin.