Schaumburg, IL (April 15, 2026) -- AXPONA (Audio Expo North America) officially marked its biggest year yet, drawing 12,546 music lovers to the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center—a 15% jump over 2025.
Thanks for the specific figures; that helps me put things into perspective. AXPONA (Audio Expo North America) in Chicago is the largest trade show in North America.
High End (in Munich through 2025, in Vienna starting in 2026) is considered the largest and most important hi-fi trade show in the world—and even it only attracts around 22,000 visitors.
Starting in 2026, High End will no longer take place at the MOC in Munich, but at the Austria Center Vienna (ACV). The move has several strategic and pragmatic reasons, but the main reason is that the operator of the MOC in Munich did not renew the contracts with the High End Society. The venue is set to undergo a long-term restructuring and take on a different character.
But Vienna is an excellent choice for the show’s future, as the Austria Center Vienna has been extensively renovated and offers state-of-the-art technology, flexible spaces, and, above all, often first-class acoustics—which are essential for hi-fi demonstrations.
Vienna also fits perfectly with the high-end audio theme in terms of atmosphere. The city has excellent international connections and offers an attractive cultural environment for exhibitors and visitors alike.
But, as mentioned, the roughly 12,500 visitors at AXPONA and the approximately 22,000 visitors at the High End trade show are, by comparison, peanuts compared to the heyday of the IFA in Berlin, where around 500,000 visitors were the norm well into the 1990s.
In the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s, IFA (then still known as the “Funkausstellung”) was indeed the place where hi-fi history was made, because back when hi-fi was still a mass phenomenon—everyone wanted a good stereo system in their living room—the major companies of the time in Germany and Europe, such as Grundig, Telefunken, Sony, Pioneer, and Technics—showcased their flagship products there, and legendary formats like the Compact Cassette (1963) and the CD (1981) were unveiled at the IFA in Berlin.
Moreover, the IFA was a massive public festival with live television broadcasts (e.g., from the Sommergarten), and hi-fi was an integral part of pop culture back then.
I visited Berlin twice and attended the HiFi-Video in Düsseldorf (often simply called “die hifi”) on several occasions.
In the 1970s and 1980s, this was a massive event that, from today’s perspective, drew crowds almost unimaginable for a specialized technology trade show, as attendance consistently reached six figures during its peak years. In 1980, at hifi Video '80, around 187,000 people visited the fair. That is nearly nine times the attendance of today’s High End in Munich and 15 times that of AXPONA.
This made the Düsseldorf hifi Video trade show the second most important industry event in the world after IFA, and the undisputed number one in the “IFA-free” years (since IFA was held only every two years until 2005).
In the 1980s, a good stereo system was what the latest iPhone or an electric car is today. It was the most important technical lifestyle product in the home.
And there was no internet.
Anyone who wanted to know what the new devices from Sony, Pioneer, Revox, or Dual could do had to go to the trade show or read trade magazines. The trade shows were the only place where you could see and touch everything in person.
And today?
The hifi Video trade show no longer exists, and IFA is now purely a consumer electronics trade show with little participation from audio companies.
That’s why the numbers from AXPONA and High End in Munich may show an increase over last year, but they’re still pretty meager compared to the 1980s hifi Events, for example.
This also aligns with the observation that the attendees at the AXPONA were mainly around 60 years old. To assess what the 52% increase from Gen Z actually means, one would need to know how many were there in previous years.
An increase from 40 to 81 visitors?
Well, anyway, many thanks to you
@amirm and the other visitors to the show for taking so much time and effort to document the whole thing for us.
