The Association for Advancing Automation (A3) has announced the keynote lineup for Automate 2026, the largest robotics and automation event in North America, scheduled for June 22–25, 2026, at McCormick Place in Chicago. The program positions AI integration as the defining challenge and opportunity for manufacturers navigating workforce shortages and competitive pressure.
The event is projected to draw more than 50,000 attendees, 1,000-plus exhibitors across 450,000 square feet of exhibit space, and more than 140 conference sessions. When Automate last ran in Chicago in 2024, it drew 42,895 registrants and 867 exhibitors across 320,000 square feet, generating a reported $50 million economic impact for the city. The 2026 edition is expected to exceed that benchmark.
The keynote structure reflects the industry’s current preoccupations more than its aspirations. Monday opens with a leadership roundtable featuring executives from FANUC America, Schneider Electric, Cognex, and Intrinsic — a mix of established robotics infrastructure players and AI-native firms that signals where the center of gravity in industrial automation has shifted. Tuesday’s session brings Siemens Digital Industries onto the stage to address the operational reality of deploying AI within existing manufacturing environments, a problem that remains significantly harder than the marketing around it suggests.
The sharpest framing comes Wednesday, when Standard Bots co-founder and CEO Evan Beard presents a session titled “99% of Tasks Still Can’t Be Automated: How Physical AI Changes That.” The premise is accurate and underappreciated. Despite two decades of robotics advancement, most manipulation tasks in unstructured environments remain intractable for conventional automation. Physical AI — foundation models trained on physical interaction data — represents the first credible path to changing that ratio at scale. Standard Bots is among the companies building toward that ceiling, and Beard’s session puts the fundamental limitation at the center of the conversation rather than the periphery.
Thursday closes with a leadership session featuring Chicago Bears Hall of Fame linebacker Brian Urlacher and longtime Bears radio voice Jeff Joniak, framing high-performance sports psychology as applicable to organizational leadership. It is the sort of programming that draws a crowd and reliably produces a quotable line or two about preparation and accountability.
The full conference, with sessions spanning machine vision, motion control, logistics robotics, and AI deployment strategy, runs across all four days. Registration is open at automateshow.com.