LEDucation 2026 Show Report

LEDucation’s 20th anniversary event held earlier this week in New York once again proved why it has grown into North America’s premiere lighting conference and trade show.

This year’s event has more than 500 booths, dozens of educational sessions and at the end of the first day more than 8,100 attendees, according to a report at www.insidelighting.com. More than 10,000 lighting professionals had pre-registered, according to that post.

The industry-wide trend toward smaller light sources continued with more LED light sources in the sub-1-inch range with pinpoint lighting control on the show floor and plenty of innovative light tape and flexible linear lighting products.  Some of products in these genres that stood out at the show were Edison Price’s Sculptural Linear flexible lighting; DMF Lightings new linear lighting line; Optique Lighting’s Velino family of channel lighting products and suspended lighting products and MaxLite’s L-Max Liner Architectural Luminaire.

There were also some new contractor-friendly fixture mounting solutions for fixture retrofits on exhibit including Leviton’s Certolux Fixture-in-Fixture for commercial, institutional, healthcare, correctional and industrial environments, and interesting field-adjustable fixtures being show, such as LEDVANCE’s portfolio of OPTI-SELECT fixtures.

Some of the big news at the show was LEDucation’s  new Designer Hours on the first morning of the show where designers had exclusive access to the exhibit halls and news that LEDucation would be expanding to three days in 2027. On the show floor, we spotted the palpable excitement of WAC Lighting about the North American launch of their new Architectural Lighting division and the success of the NEMRA networking and panel discussion, which attracted dozens of members of the association’s new lighting division.

Next year’s LEDucation will be held April 13-15, 2027 at the New York Hilton in downtown Manhattan.