[Viewpoint] AXPONA 2026: The current health of Hi-Fi shows in the US

For those who may not yet know, the AXPONA (Audio Expo North America) is the most important high‑end audio show in North America. The event is held every year at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center Hotel in Schaumburg, Illinois, just outside Chicago. It takes place inside a large multi‑level complex combining a four‑star hotel with a convention center of more than 13,000 square meters, offering a total of 235 rooms suitable for listening sessions.

On April 28, AXPONA was acquired by a new company called Sound & Fury LLC, led by entrepreneur and audiophile Henry Wu. The firm, a strategic consulting company registered in Connecticut, is owned by Mr. Wu himself (no website available). Sound & Fury LLC took over the show from the previous organizer, JD Events.

This year's Axpona ran from April 10 to 12 and reported an increase in attendance: overall visitor numbers were up 15%, with a striking +52% among enthusiasts under 25 - although, tellingly, no baseline figures from the previous year were provided. Ah, statistics...always generous, rarely transparent.

Total attendance exceeded 12,000 people but, unlike the Vienna HighEnd 2026 I covered in my previous editorial, there is no breakdown between industry professionals and regular enthusiasts. If the split resembled the European pattern (roughly 50-50), we would be looking at 6,000-7,000 non‑professional visitors. In any case, the total is less than half the turnout of the recently concluded Vienna show. AXPONA occupied 220 rooms and hosted 750 brands (compared to Vienna's 1,000). Both AXPONA and Vienna are ticketed events, with paid admission at the entrance. More precisely:

Younger visitors (students) enter for free in Vienna, whereas at AXPONA they pay a reduced‑price ticket. As a reminder, Gen Z refers to people aged between 14 and 29.

To be fair, AXPONA also includes a sizeable car‑stereo section, with more than 50 systems on display - which explains, with all due respect to the enthusiastic reports you may have read elsewhere, the higher proportion of younger attendees compared with traditional HiFi shows. There were also many rooms dedicated to Home Theater. It is obviously impossible to determine how many visitors were interested exclusively in two‑channel home audio (no HT, no car stereo), but that is not the point I want to focus on.

Twelve thousand visitors, in a nation of 350 million inhabitants - plus another 50 million in neighboring Canada - hardly seems a figure worth celebrating. We are talking about the wealthy United States, and this is their flagship HiFi event. By contrast, the Vienna HighEnd draws from a much larger pool: roughly 450 million people in the EU alone, rising to 750 million if we consider the entire European continent. And let's not forget that AXPONA takes place less than an hour from downtown Chicago, whose metropolitan area counts 9.6 million residents. In essence, out of this potential audience of 10 million residents (OK, fewer if we exclude children), only 12,000 people actually paid for a ticket to attend an audio show featuring two‑channel setups, home theater, and car stereo. And, of course, I'm not even factoring in that the entire state of Illinois - the sixth most populous in the U.S. - has about 13 million inhabitants, of whom roughly 10 million are adults (age>18). The average employee income is around $63,900 per year, which makes Illinois one of the higher-wage Midwestern states. Those 12,000 attendees - from whom I'm not subtracting industry professionals (roughly half?) - amount to exactly 0.12% of the adult population.

To me, these numbers still look small - even more so when considering average per‑capita income (and related purchasing power). Average income in the United States is significantly higher than in the European Union. In nominal terms, American income exceeds Europe's by more than 50%, though the gap narrows to about 30% when adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). More precisely: average U.S. income exceeds $82,000 per year, while the EU average is around $41,000. In PPP terms, the EU figure rises to about $53,000.

In short: U.S. enthusiasts have, on average, a far greater ability to spend on discretionary goods such as HiFi - and yet the numbers for the country's most important show remain very modest. It leaves us with two possibilities: either HiFi no longer commands the interest it once did, or traditional HiFi shows no longer do...or perhaps it's a summa of both. Hence: if Athens weeps, Sparta certainly isn't laughing. These may not be the Peloponnesian Wars, but it may be time to understand what is really happening - and perhaps set aside the fanfare and the drum‑rolling.

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July 2026 Editorial

AXPONA 2026: The current health of Hi-Fi shows in the US