Embedded World remains one of the most important gatherings for the embedded systems industry. The 2026 edition in Nuremberg once again confirmed several trends shaping the ecosystem: the growing presence of open source technologies, strong community participation, and increasing attention to new regulatory and technological topics.
Returning to Nuremberg
Coming to Nuremberg is always a pleasure. I lived here for two beautiful years, and it was my first experience working and living abroad. In many ways, returning for Embedded World feels like coming back to a familiar place.
The event itself appears to be in very good health. One thing that stood out to me this year was the increasing amount of content surrounding the exhibition. Beyond the booths and demonstrations, there is a growing number of presentations and talks available to attendees, which makes the event even more valuable.
My trip was slightly longer this year. Since I now live in La Palma, Canary Islands, attending events in mainland Europe requires a bit more planning. For EW 2026, I flew from La Palma (SPC) to Tenerife South (TFS) with Binter Canarias and then took a direct flight from Tenerife South Airport to Nuremberg, with Condor. It was not bad at all. Flights to mainland Europe now take a couple of extra hours compared to my time in Málaga, and La Palma’s airport (SPC) is farther from home than Málaga’s was. Still, as long as the wind stays below the safety threshold at La Palma’s airport, these trips are fairly comfortable if you do not need constant travel.
As always, the visit also included a couple of good restaurants, local food, and excellent beer with friends that live in Nuremberg and its surroundings which is always a highlight when coming to Nuremberg. Overall, it was a great visit to this city and another great edition of the event.
Open Source and Other Conversations Across the Show Floor
Although it is not one of the most visible trends across the exhibition halls, the strong and growing presence of open source technologies, products, and organizations is undeniable.
Several open source companies were present, including Pingutronix, Collabora, Linutronix, Igalia or KDAB, just to name a few of the most popular ones. Their booths showcased different technologies, demos, and devices running open source stacks.
Alongside these companies, many open source projects supported by foundations or industry associations were also present. Among them were the Eclipse Foundation, Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), the Zephyr Project, the Raspberry Pi Foundation, OSADL, Linaro, or RISC-V were among the ones I visited. Some of these booths were extremely popular, including products and services from a variety of their member companies, highlighting how widely their software is being adopted in new devices.
Open source was not only visible among specialized companies and projects. Many large corporations and silicon vendors were also emphasizing their support for open source technologies, including the Linux kernel and different open source real-time operating systems.
I also noticed increasing attention around technologies such as Android and AOSP, as well as Flutter, which appear to be gaining traction in the embedded space.
Given this strong presence, I would recommend that open source companies working in systems, embedded platforms, networking, robotics, or IoT, as well as more open source projects, consider attending Embedded World 2027, which will take place around this time next year.
I extend this recommendation to Spanish companies in the embedded and industrial space. There were only 7 Spanish organizations at this year’s event. Too few, in my view.
Events like this are also an opportunity to reconnect with people in my network. I was also able to talk to several good old friends, although not with all of them since many were extremely busy during the show.
I was particularly happy to see SCANOSS, a former customer, delivering the talk “Detecting Cryptographic Algorithms for Quantum-Ready Embedded Systems”. Over the last three to four months this company has done significant work in the field of cryptography detection, so Matías D’Aloia, the presenter, was able to include new material beyond what had originally been planned in the abstract.
Talks and Industry Insights
Beyond the exhibition booths, I attended several presentations organized in different exhibitors’ corners across the halls. One talk that I particularly enjoyed was the presentation of the “2026 State of Automotive Software Development Report“, delivered by two of the Perforce Software staff. These Exhibitor’s Corner sessions add an important dimension to the event by providing insight into broader industry developments and trends. It is a great idea, well delivered.
Finally, two topics clearly stood out across the event as the “new kids in town”: the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and AI. Quite frankly, I think both were somewhat oversold. However, if events like Embedded World can be seen as a temperature sensor for the industry, it is clear that a significant amount of time, effort, and investment will go into these areas in the coming years.
Save the dates for 2027 edition of the Embedded World: March 16th to 18th.
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