Glasstec is billed on its big themes, and this year’s were AI, decarbonisation and the circular economy. But walk the halls with windows in mind and the story of the 2026 show, held in Düsseldorf, was written at the edge of the sealed unit – and in the machines that build it.
Start with the spacer. Dow’s stand drew a steady crowd for its new Power Edge System, built around DOWSIL Power Edge 3000, a silane-enhanced reactive thermoplastic spacer bonded to the faster-curing DOWSIL 3363 structural silicone. Dow claims a spacer 15% slimmer, using 15% less material with 15% lower thermal conductivity, plus cavities up to 25mm for acoustic builds or integral blinds. That is a pitch to IGU makers chasing performance and margin at once.
The thermoplastic theme ran right through the machinery halls. Forel, marking 50 years, unveiled a High Speed Thermoplastic IG Line that it says runs 30% faster than conventional set-ups by turning spacer application through to pressing into one continuous flow. LiSEC, which counted around 7,000 visitors to its stand, had its new TPA-B applicator running live, with a robot unloading finished units into the automated IG-Sort curing and sorting system.
Glaston, under the banner “Glass. Automated.”, showed fifth-generation TPS technology handling double, triple and quadruple units across 6–27mm spacer widths. The detail that will interest UK fabricators most, though, was its MUNTIN’MASTER with cobot, which removes the last manual touchpoint from fitting Georgian bars in TPS units.
The logic is simple. Triple glazing and heavier units are coming, and labour is the constraint. Kit that lifts throughput without adding headcount is what buyers were talking about.
Weight was the other conversation. Quanex Edgetech came to talk lightweight insulating glass, building on its work with thin-glass triples: units with a 1mm or 1.5mm centre pane that it says are more than 40% lighter yet still fit 70mm profiles. With the Future Homes Standard nudging the UK towards triple glazing, that is a handling and hardware argument as much as a thermal one.
Vacuum glazing continues its shift from showpiece to product. Vitro’s next-generation VacuMax VIG now pairs with its Solarban low-e coatings and, importantly for residential buyers, does away with the visible vacuum port and hides the getters from view. Saint-Gobain, whose INSIO VIG already carries CE marking at Ug 0.3–0.5 W/m²K, brought a broader residential story to the show.
That story leaned hard on overheating. The new ECLAZ SUN PLUS is aimed at summer comfort, pairing high daylight with stronger protection against solar gain – which speaks directly to Part O pressures on south- and west-facing elevations. Elsewhere, EnduroShield continued the rollout of BirdWise, an inorganic, UV-stable bird-deterrent coating sprayed onto surface one of any glass, on demand or as a retrofit.
None of this had the theatre of illuminated car roofs or giant cast-glass columns. But the message for fenestration was clear: the next gains will come from smarter edges, lighter units and factories that need fewer hands to run them.
