Editorial Team
Chicago, 14 September 2026. The International Manufacturing Technology Show opened today at McCormick Place with more than 1,800 exhibitors across over 1.2 million square feet, and with industrial AI given its own floor space for the first time.
The new Industrial AI Arena hosts 32 exhibitors. Alongside it runs a full-day Industrial AI Conference on 16 September, developed with Dr. Jay Lee and the University of Maryland's Center for Industrial AI, covering predictive maintenance, quality, data readiness and the edge-versus-cloud decision.
The machines around it
The launches announced into the show are a reminder that the AI arena sits inside a machine-tool fair. Okuma is introducing its Multus U1000 and U2000 multitasking machines; Index debuts the G160; Mazak brings the Integrex i-350S Neo, adding grinding to turning and milling; EOS introduces its M4 Onyx laser powder-bed-fusion platform to North America. Tsugami, Matsuura, Haas, JTEKT, Marubeni Citizen-Cincom and DN Solutions are also showing new multitasking, hybrid and five-axis centres.
Read together, the programme and the product news point in one direction. The machines are consolidating operations that used to need separate setups, and the software layer above them is where the show has decided the next argument will be had.
The education programme
IMTS 2026 runs nine conferences and more than 90 sessions this week, including the Job Shops Workshop, Día de América Latina en IMTS, the AM+ Workshop, an Investor Summit, the ELEVATE Conference with the Women in Manufacturing Association, and the Industrial Laser Conference. The show closes on 19 September.
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