2025 was a pretty awesome year for hi-fi fans. As well as more new winners in the What Hi-Fi? Awards than we've had for many years, we also saw a few cataclysmic industry shifts – including Harman’s purchase of all of Masimo’s audio brands.
In fact, it was so chaotic that you may justifiably be wondering what 2026 has in store for us. Will Bowers & Wilkins get a cash injection from its new owners? Will CD finally get the same revival as vinyl? What surprises do we have planned to celebrate What Hi-Fi?’s 50th anniversary?
These are all valid questions that we don’t yet have answers for. Instead, we’ve come up with this guide, offering our best educated guesses.
Streaming (especially on the go) may get better
By Alastair Stevenson
Streaming is undeniably the norm now. So much so that the latest estimates from the British Phonographic Industry suggest it accounts for £1bn of the total £1.49bn in revenue the UK music industry generated last year.
The issue, though, is that – even with the launch of Spotify’s swanky new Lossless tier – it’s still not the final word in quality most of the time. There are a few reasons for that – the person's choice of streaming service, hardware and the recording quality of the track itself.
However, one of the most common problems that people will encounter is Bluetooth, which doesn’t have the bandwidth to deliver hi-res streaming without a lot of compression.
Based on an interview I had with Qualcomm vice president of mixed signal solutions and wearables, Dino Bekis, earlier this year, a solution may well appear in 2026.
That is Qualcomm’s long-talked-about, but yet to be heard (at least by us), Expanded Personal Area Network (XPAN) technology. The tech is designed to let compatible hardware stream music scalably using a hybrid Bluetooth / wi-fi approach similar to Lenbrook’s MQA-made Airia tech.
Impressively, the firm is quoting the ability to stream 24-bit/192kHz audio wirelessly to headphones with XPAN capable chipsets – that's as high as Tidal, Apple Music and Qobuz go right now.
If that's true, and the scalable element – which adjusts the quality based on the state of the network in real-time – is as seamless as Qualcomm claims it is, it would be a big upgrade.
And with Qualcomm teasing “new headphones” with XPAN-enabled chips being ready to appear “very soon”, I can’t help but wonder if 2026 is the year it happens, and we finally get the big jump in streaming quality on the go that we’ve been waiting for.
This is especially true given Qualcomm's current client list in the world of wireless headphones, which includes Bose, Bowers & Wilkins, Sennheiser, Master & Dynamic, Beyerdynamic and more…
More all-in-one products that don't fit traditional categories
By Kashfia Kabir
While integrated products and all-in-one systems aren’t new, I think we’ll be seeing more and more products that blur the line between clear-cut categories, and become multi-tasking solutions that fit however people want to use them.
Instead of products dedicated to one purpose, we’ll start to see more like the Focal Mu-so Hekla, which doubles up as a Dolby Atmos soundbar and a hi-res streaming speaker, all from one box. Is it a home cinema product, a hi-fi product or a lifestyle product?
We’re not quite sure. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? What will matter most for most people is that it performs well and sounds good, whatever they play through it – be it their carefully curated hi-res music library, live sports events, blockbuster movies or ambient lo-fi tracks.
Instead of having, say, a soundbar for your TV and a dedicated stereo system for your music, it makes sense in today's climate – where space, time and money are in short supply – to have one product that does it all. And does it well.
Of course, I’d hope to see these kinds of quality products with a more affordable price tag (the Hekla costs a cool £3000 / $3600), but products such as the Ruark R410, Cambridge Audio Evo One, and the original Naim Mu-so 2 prove that you can get great quality and this kind of convenience for a third of that premium price.
A continued resurgence of physical media
By Harry McKerrell
If the past few years have been anything to go by, physical media isn’t going anywhere.
In fact, the likes of vinyl records and CDs, and the products with which to play them, have only gained increasing market traction, reflected in the fact that the end of 2025 saw the unveiling of multiple CD transports, including Pro-Ject’s CD Box RS2 Tube and Quad’s retro-modern 3CDT.
FiiO, meanwhile, aimed to appeal more to the younger generation with its DM15 R2R portable CD player as the year draws to a close.
The small but significant resurgence of CD sales in the past couple of years may have dimmed, but that hasn’t stopped audiophiles from continuing to champion their CD collection, and the influx of new players on the market are indicative of a desire for a return to physical media that goes far beyond the continued vinyl revival.
That said, vinyl continues to lead the charge, with sales in October 2025 up by over 7% when compared with the previous year, according to the BPI.
This year alone we have tested record players as varied as the Bluetooth-ready Pro-Ject T1 Evo BT to the thrilling, premium Vertere DG-X; and there are plenty more turntables, from budget to high-end, waiting in the wings for us next year. Meanwhile, our best CD player Awards category has blossomed to four winners this year – a surprise development.
The Cyrus 40 CD and Rotel Michi Q5 show just how strong the appetite for quality CD playback is, and we’ve even seen a turntable-and-CD-player combo from Philips unveiled this year.
If anything, I predict that 2026 will be an even bigger year for physical music formats and the products that play them. The human desire for tangible formats, and everything that comes with them – ownership, collectability, sound quality, exclusivity, ritual – has only strengthened in an age of endless streaming. Long may it continue.
Cassettes will continue to make a (very slow) comeback
People like old things. Especially old, mechanical things. And in the world of hi-fi, apart from a turntable, it doesn’t get much more mechanical than an old-school cassette player.
And, over the past year or two, we have seen efforts by brands such as Fiio and We Are Rewind to rekindle our nostalgic flame and get us feeling all warm and fuzzy by launching portable cassette players of their own.
You have to admire the dedication to a format that most people won’t have touched for decades. Indeed, some newer members of the What Hi-Fi? review team aren’t old enough to remember the format first time around.
The age of the format, however, hasn’t stopped modern artists such as Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and Lana Del Rey releasing cassettes of their own.
In fact, I found myself jumping aboard the nostalgia train a few months ago when our technical editor, Ketan Bharadia managed to get hold of a fully restored Nakamichi DR-3 from the early ’90s.
I was a bit young for cassette separates back in the ’80s, but have fond memories of taking a Walkman or two for a spin in the back seat of my parents’ Vauxhall (or Opel for our friends across the water).
And if I hadn’t thrown a huge chunk of my tape collection away over the past few years, I could easily see myself getting the itch to maybe look into buying such a player.
It feels as though vinyl has been making a comeback for literally decades, so I’m sensible enough to think cassettes won't be shipping in their millions anytime soon (or ever, for that matter).
Nor will there be a sudden influx of new spinners from mainstream tech giants such as Sony; but I think there will be enough mileage in the format to maintain a steady trickle of new players and album releases moving forward.
Those in the best position to try to rekindle interest in the format are new brands or entrepreneurial brands coming into the market, particularly those based in the Far East where they are closer to the component parts.
This makes them easier to both source and engineer, and who's to say they can't attract a whole new generation of fans and users to the format in 2026?
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