What does 2026 have in store for IoT? Steve Rogerson talked with Dunstan Power from ByteSnap Design to find out.

It is that time of year again. As the holiday season approaches, people start to reflect on what they have achieved in the past twelve months and look forward to the next. For businesses, that means planning for what is coming and there is no exception for those in the IoT industry.

That said, 2026 is looking like a continuation of 2025 in terms of technology, or an “evolution rather than revolution”, as Dunstan Power, director of UK engineering consultancy ByteSnap Design, put it when I caught up with him last week.

The big issues of this year – security, AI, 5G, power consumption – will continue to dominate the headlines next year. Will there be any big surprises? Well, maybe, but they wouldn’t be surprises if we knew what they were.

So, let’s start with security. This is a changing landscape and standards are evolving nicely to counteract more sophisticated threats. However, insecure old-fashioned IoT devices are all over the place and remain connected to many networks.

Dunstan believes we may have to live with this. “Most of the legacy devices are consumer devices with a limited lifecycle,” he said. “They will eventually stop working. Apps will stop supporting them. Things that connect to them won’t any more. There is a limited lifecycle and they will just get thrown away.”

As to new IoT devices, the standards are now coming into place or are already there and companies bringing out products have to make sure they are secure.

“That is a challenge everyone has to face,” said Dunstan. “People will have to meet the standards.” He acknowledged though that there were still competing standards and some consolidation was needed.

Next year though will start to see the serious roll out of Bluetooth 6. It is here now but only in a few devices. The key feature of it is channel sounding, which increases location accuracy dramatically and thus makes it suitable for many more applications in asset tracking and beyond.

“This means you can do centimetre-level accuracy,” said Dunstan. “It will open up applications that don’t yet exist. People will dream up new apps to use this.”

Also already here but set to spread more widely next year is 5G RedCap. RedCap means reduced capacity and is a simplified version of 5G more suited to low-power, less complex IoT devices that don’t need all the bells and whistles that 5G offers.

Many IoT devices are fixed or connected to a LAN, either wirelessly or wired, and will use wifi, Zigbee or the like for their connection. But others are out and about, and need cellular communications.

“The problem is that brings power and price pressures,” said Dunstan. “RedCap is here to solve that. It started back in 2024 but I think next year it will really start rolling out for IoT.”

One of the big influences in all walks of life in the past year has been the dramatic advancements in AI, and we have seen that come into the IoT world in what has become known as AIoT. This works in two ways. AI is at its best today in the cloud with the resources that lets it harness. For IoT devices, this means a large data pipe and, true, some can make use of that, but some can’t. And this, perhaps more exciting, brings AI at the edge were IoT devices can process information locally and act on that.

“There is a lot of talk of AI at the edge,” said Dunstan, “for when you have a limited data stream and will have to process stuff there and then, such as with facial recognition and weapons control. But if you have the power to link with the cloud, you don’t need AI at the edge.”

A big application for AI at the edge is in health monitoring, helping people stay at home rather than being hospitalised. There are security uses too, for example recognising out-of-the-ordinary sounds such as breaking glass and taking appropriate action.

A less sexy advance that Dunstan sees for next year will be in battery technology.

“A real problem is people want constant connections and lots of features with a battery that lasts for years,” he said. “They need a reality check.”

But it is leading to advances in making batteries more efficient and exploiting energy harvesting to prolong battery life or do away with batteries altogether.

“That is the area we need movement on,” said Dunstan.

So there we are, security, AI, 5G and power consumption, all set to dominate the headlines for 2026. Sounds a bit like 2025.