July 2026

High-End Vienna 2026: A Successful New Era For Europe's Premier Audio Show
From Eurovision delays to packed demo rooms, HIGH END Vienna's first event delivers a confident new chapter.
Editorial By Alan Sircom

  Mid-way through the schedule of this issue, we had a true bellweather audio event. High-End Vienna, 2026 - the first show from the High-End Society at its new venue took place over the first weekend of June. While the Munich High-End show it replaces typically took place a couple of weeks earlier, the fledgling show suffered an unexpected delay because Austria won the Eurovision Song Contest and was hosting it in Vienna. That's one heck of a clash!

This delay was the straw that broke the camel's back in the eyes of the naysayers. "It's doomed!" they said. "No one's going to go to Vienna... it's not a hub airport like Munich" was the grumble. "There aren't enough rooms!" and "The rooms are all wrong!" went the cries from the audio industry.

Well... no!

The show was a success. Far from the dramatic fall in attendance, numbers were up across the board. OK, so they weren't 'significantly' up compared to Munich 2025, but this comes after several years of at best stagnation and occasionally mild decline in attendance at Munich. The 'no one will show' fear was unfounded, especially on the trade days and Saturday. The Sunday was the Feast of Corpus Christi, which the Viennese evidently take quite seriously.

The rooms were still 'to be determined.' Learning the dynamics of the rooms (in terms of physical space, how the rooms behave, and - hardest of all to determine – whether there is some noise-polluting interaction between the rooms) was still an untested quantity until manufacturers began installing their systems. But, manufacturers and distributors learn fast, and next year rooms that showed musical promise will likely blossom.

There are lessons to be taken from the show, however. It's a far bigger space than the Munich MOC. While that has great advantages for reducing ambient noise pollution (holding meetings and having conversations with customers near to the room is entirely 'doable') navigating the Austria Centre Vienna is a lot harder. Companies were already planning better signage for the corridors, for example, following the lead set by Audio Reference, AudioQuest, Clearaudio, Innuos and more.

The other lesson that needs to be learned is the importance and coordination of the 'off-piste' shows. High-End at ACV is already close to capacity, and the overspill is currently spread across several tall buildings in the surrounding area (as well as a few half a city away). To attend all takes a lot of time out of an already busy schedule; if they all took the same hotel, they would get more visitors.

But these are simply teething troubles. I look forward to Vienna 2027!

Alan Sircom, Editor hi-fi+

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