The Audio Engineering Society’s annual US show runs from Friday, October 30 to Sunday, November 1, 2026, at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee. That is a break with the show’s history: it has usually been held in big coastal cities, New York and Los Angeles and occasionally San Francisco. Last year’s edition, in Long Beach, California from October 22 to 25, was the society’s first West Coast convention in almost ten years.
Why Nashville
AES announced the move in December 2025, pointing to the city’s “uniquely concentrated ecosystem of world-class studios, live music venues, audio education institutions, pro audio manufacturers, engineers, artists, and audio professionals, major record labels and more.” Convention chair Graham Kirk put it more simply: “Nashville is more than a destination — it is one of the world’s great centers for music production and audio technology.”
In practice, that means a large share of the programme happens in the city’s studios rather than the convention centre. AES has promised studio tours and work with the local audio community, and off-site studio workshops and tours are scheduled for Thursday, October 29, the day before the show opens.
The schedule
Workshops and sessions run Friday from 2pm to 6pm, Saturday from 9am to 7pm, and Sunday from 9am to 5pm. The exhibition floor opens only on the weekend, Saturday 10am to 6pm and Sunday 10am to 5pm, so Friday afternoon is sessions only.
The programme covers recording and production, live sound, installed audio, broadcast, immersive audio, education, AI and machine learning, game audio and emerging technology, in technical sessions, research presentations, workshops, studio tours and networking events. Kirk chairs the convention committee with co-chairs Russ Long and Brian “Bt” Gibbs.
Who’s exhibiting
The exhibitor list AES published in August runs past 80 companies. It includes Abbey Road, Allen & Heath, AMS Neve, API, Audeze, Audio-Technica, Austrian Audio, Blackmagic Design, DiGiCo, Eventide, Genelec, Google, Harrison Audio, L-Acoustics, Neumann, Shure, Solid State Logic, Sony, Telefunken, Waves and Yamaha. Booth reservations for a 2027 Nashville show are already open.
How it differs from NAMM
The AES Show is built around engineers, researchers and students. NAMM, the other big US show, is a trade fair where instrument and gear makers sell to retailers. At AES the sessions matter as much as the show floor, and the weekend-only exhibition hours reflect that. If you work in recording, live sound or broadcast, the session list is the reason to go.
If Nashville is out of reach, the society also runs conventions outside the US, and the research papers presented at its conventions are published in the AES E-Library. Early-bird registration closed on August 27. Current registration rates are listed on aesshow.com.