“If you haven't noticed, every single exhibitor at NRF is an AI company.”
Publicis Groupe Chief Commerce Strategy Officer Jason Goldberg wasn’t exaggerating too much when he made that comment during his closing keynote at NRF ’26 earlier this month. In fact, he wasn’t the only speaker at this year’s event to make that tongue-in-cheek observation.
Clearly not all of the 1,000-odd exhibitors at “Retail’s Big Show” in New York were specialists in artificial intelligence. And not every speaker on the event’s lengthy conference agenda focused on AI as a topic. But it certainly seemed that way for many of the roughly 40,000 retail practitioners in attendance.
No, global retailing as seen through the lens of NRF ’26 did not completely revolve around AI: the topic of reverse logistics earned its own distinct companion event this year. And in-store retail media again had its own one-day side conference, sponsored by digital signage specialist Stratacache. But AI was pervasive throughout those discussions as well.
The NRF '26: Recap Report explores how agentic AI, retail media, and in-store media creative are setting a new baseline with how retailers and brands connect with shoppers, as made evident by the key trends and takeaways from this year's event.
