CES 2026 is just around the corner and no one is partying harder than Lenovo at the world’s largest trade show. Well, I’m sure someone does (it’s Vegas, after all). But Lenovo is prolific with its announcements – last year the company introduced over 50 products and some of the best laptops came out of them. Therefore, it is more than likely that Lenovo will have a big breakthrough this year.
Lenovo is hosting its Tech World event on Tuesday, January 6, 2026 at 5:00 p.m. PT. We’ll see Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang on stage at The Sphere in Las Vegas, where he will unveil the company’s latest projects. You can livestream it from home (register here).
So what can we expect from Lenovo in 2026?
It’s all about AI (because of course it is)
While it’s not surprising at this point, Lenovo will be talking a lot about AI. Specifically, it is about “smarter AI for everyone”. This is vague to say the least.
What we do know is that Lenovo is working with FIFA to host the world’s first AI-powered FIFA World Cup. The company is also participating in the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Lenovo plans to talk more about it at its Tech World event.
Entering sports isn’t a shocking development for Lenovo. The company has been a partner of Formula 1 since 2022. But this year Lenovo delivered its AI solutions. Lara Rodini, Global Sponsorships & Activation Director at Lenovo, spoke to NSS Sports about how “AI-enhanced hardware can help improve live streaming by automatically detecting and correcting low-quality images.” That sounds nice, but Lenovo Tech World isn’t just about sports, is it? No.
Lenovo is pushing its idea of a “hybrid AI strategy,” which (at least for now) appears to be more about providing services to enterprises. CEO Yang mentioned that he would also like to initiate the next step of the company’s strategy at an “individual level.”
Lenovo also wants AI to “get personal” and design AI to “understand you.” I’m very skeptical about what Lenovo thinks this looks like in practice. We know that its AI solutions are already working in AI content creation, which is a huge red flag for any artist worth their salt. Lenovo’s hybrid AI is also used for data science. Data aggregation is one of the better uses of AI, but Lenovo wants its solution to analyze that data too. This can be tricky. As we have seen time and time again, AI simply cannot give us all the right answers.
But I’m not here for the AI solutions – I want to see this new technology. One of the things I’m most excited about is Lenovo’s handheld gaming devices. Last year we saw announcements for the Legion Go S and the Legion Go 2, all of which have since been met with a somewhat disappointing response. I’ve been using the Legion Go S, and while I enjoy it, the convenience doesn’t match the new Xbox Ally
What we’re almost guaranteed to see, however, is a deluge of laptop announcements, from ThinkPads and Yogas to Legions and IdeaPads (this one might be – there was only one last year). It’s always nice to get new gaming or business laptops, but I’m keeping an eye on the new launches from Yoga – this is the best of the best in premium consumer laptops. I’d put them there next to Apple’s MacBooks.
We’ll see how Intel’s rumored Panther Lake chipset works in these laptops too. Of course, Lenovo also makes desktops, including gaming PCs, mini PCs, and all-in-ones. While there are many Intel-based Lenovo devices, it also uses AMD, which is also likely to announce its new chipsets.
Lenovo also makes monitors, tablets, and a number of other peripherals that we may see announcements for. But I’m not really excited about anything in these categories. I have to say that while Android tablets aren’t great, Lenovo’s Tab series is generally pretty reliable and affordable. Still, I wouldn’t put it against an iPad.
What would be really exciting would be to see new innovative designs, like the transparent laptop Lenovo introduced last year and the rollable laptop it introduced the year before. It’s always fun to break norms with conceptual devices, even if they aren’t very practical. But it would be nice to get a real product, and ideally one that doesn’t cost several thousand dollars.
CES 2026 is just around the corner, so we don’t have to wait much longer to see what Lenovo has in store for us. For better or worse, AI is one of the biggest trends right now. So we’ll see if Lenovo can make them noticeably useful to the average consumer, without the usual problematic issues of AI.
