GlassBuild America Wraps Another Successful Year
GlassBuild America 2026, held Sept. 23-25, welcomed attendees and exhibitors to the Las Vegas Convention Center for another year of innovation, business, networking and education.
Debuting the Keynote Theater
New to GlassBuild this year was the Keynote Theater, a dedicated space for the three keynotes that started each day of the show.
Day one of GlassBuild welcomed Daymond John, star of ABC's Shark Tank. In his presentation, John stressed the importance of setting goals and doing your business "homework" to lay the groundwork for success.
"Change will always be at our forefront," John says. He urged business owners to understand their value proposition, and encouraged attendees to learn from their own mistakes as well as those of others who have tried to succeed in business before them.
Economist Connor Lokar opened day two of the show. Lokar’s outlook for the U.S. GDP is mixed: the economy is growing and he expects the growth to continue, but it will slow in 2027, beginning to stall as we move into next year. “It's not a recession, but we do have some headwinds coming [in the broader economy],” says Lokar.
While Lokar expects the economy to slow, he urged businesses to remain active. “It doesn't mean you can't grow your business. It means the economy won't do it for you,” he said. Lokar encourages companies to have a plan, whether it be to introduce new products, explore new markets, or take advantage of new opportunities. Read more from Lokar's forecast.
The final keynote ended the week on a strong note with the fifth Women in Glass and Fenestration breakfast and keynote address. Syndi Sim, director of sales and business development, Q-Railing, kicked the session off by highlighting the representation of women within NGA's leadership, noting that 80% of the staff and 100% of the senior leadership team are women. She also discussed the success of the California Glass Association Women in Glass chapter, as well as a similar chapter established in Texas.
Barbara Bouza, executive director at Live, Work, Play at CannonDesign, and previously with Disney Imagineering, led the keynote address. Her keynote centered on the importance of lifelong curiosity, learning and overcoming perfectionism. Drawing from her experience working for Walt Disney Imagineering, she emphasized that design should tell a story and create human connections.
Bouza highlighted historical figures in the architetcure realm like Julia Morgan and Norma Sklarek to illustrate the importance of visibility for women and people of color in architecture.
During the panel portion of the keynote, Bouza and Sim addressed common barriers to leadership for women, including the misconception that women must be perfect before accepting promotions, the tendency for women to delay leadership opportunities due to feeling "not ready," and the need for intentionality in recrutiment and retainment to avoid "men-only" leadership structures.
Days one and two at the Keynote Theater also included the Glass Magazine and Window + Door Awards ceremonies. This is the first year since 2019 that the Window + Door Awards have featured an in-person ceremony. These ceremonies were emceed by Mic Patterson, ambassador of innovation & collaboration at Facade Tectonics Institute, Inc. and Elton Boocock, an AI strategist and AI speaker for the glazing industry.
From the show floor
Exhibitors at GlassBuild showcased new and legacy products and innovations. They spoke with Glass Magazine editors about the challenges and triumphs of the past year, and what's ahead for many going into 2027.
For example, many are saying the automation conversation has shifted from whether to how fast. At Salem Fabrication Technologies Group, Inc., Doug Mangus says that automation is an inevitability: "In the future everyone will have to automate." The company brought its AMR (autonomous mobile robot) to GlassBuild again, which can now move full racks of glass across the factory floor, scanning a code that ties into the plant's ERP to know where the glass goes. He sees humanoid robotics as the next step, and notes there's very little left in fabrication that can't be automated. For perspective, Salem brought the first robotic arm to GlassBuild back in 2016.
FOREL Spa, marking its 50th anniversary this year, is working on two fully automated manufacturing plants right now. Troy Larson pointed to the labor shortage, and fabricators’ desire for speed and quality as the drivers. On display at their booth is their single-seal IG line which runs a 24-second cycle. An additional innovation is how the spacer is heated, without heating the glass, delivering more consistent heating overall and fewer IG failures.
New digital technologies are also helping machinery companies make equipment purchases. Customers are facing an uncertain market, which can make capital investments a challenge. Two companies are attacking that from different angles.
Joseph Gates of Lattuada says they're running simulations that show a customer exactly what automation would do to their throughput and when the investment pays back. It usually pays back sooner than the customer expects, he says, and seeing the math tends to move people off the fence.
Salem is doing it visually. At the show, they had virtual reality goggles that let a customer walk through different machinery configurations and see how the equipment would actually be laid out.
AI is also top of mind for many. Hegla will be showcasing its new AI integration in its software division at glasstec in Dusseldorf, Germany, Oct. 20-23. HHH Equipment Resources has a new app in development that uses AI and is designed to help connect workflows, increase productivity and take a more strategic approach to glass fabrication.
All new Innovation Lounge
With AI and new technology in mind, GlassBuild 2026 also introduced the new Innovation Lounge. This new space on the show floor was a curated showcase that brought together new technologies reshaping the built environment, spotlighting cutting-edge advancements across AI, architectural glass, robotics, next-generation technology platforms and sustainability.
Streamline AI, which is a native software that helps estimation teams save time, was one of the companies with a stand in the lounge. A company representative said that they received many high quality leads at the show and that the "innovations grou pis very intentional. They know what they want."
Elton Boocock also held office hours at the Innovation Lounge to help answer any questions that attendees had about AI. He spoke with a fabricator who was interested in how they can use AI on their machines.
"The answer is that the fabricator won’t need to ‘use AI’, but the software that the hardware manufacturers provide will increasingly include forms of AI. My thoughts were that we will now see a rush in those manufacturers adding ‘AI’, but what we really need is the phase after that, when things settle and the AI becomes useful rather than a label," says Boocock.
He also spoke with a contractor that wanted to create a digital ‘brain’ in the business, to contain all the learned knowledge and make it accessible through AI. The contracotr had been quoted a lot of money to achieve that, whereas as existing tools could do the job they need. The message there was "coming to Glass Build may have just saved you a lot of money," Boocock says, but also, to be aware that right now people are jumping on the AI bandwagon to make money from unsuspecting business owners. Be cautious
Another conversation Boocock had was about how busy everyone in their company is and how they don't have time to get involved with AI, but know it could probably help.
"This is a classic problem, but at least it’s approaching AI from the right angle. The key in this was to understand what was killing the time and then take out the biggest time killer first, to free up time to then go after the other things. You don’t have to do everything at once," he says.
Students at GlassBuild
This year's GlassBuild welcomed 250 local Clark County students to the show floor. This offered an opportunity for the students to "see themselves in glass." Students completed challenges in the Skills Challenge Area, including caulking their names or other designs at the Dow booth, or completing math challenges at the FHC booth, among others.
Students also walked the show floor, following the Career Discovery Trail which brough them to companies spanning multiple segments of the glass industry, including A+W Software, CRL and Q-Railing.
Angela Santos, marketing specialist with Q-Railing said that she was excited for the students to come by their booth because education is so important. "Not a lot of people know about this industry until they get the chance to learn about it. And once you learn about it, it really is so interesting. There's so many different opportunities out there."
Santos added that she was looking forward to speaking with young girls as a women in a male-dominated field, to offer inspiration to them that they can join this industry too and there are allies out there paving the way.
Izabella C. is a sophomore at a Clark County school who participated in the event at GlassBuild. She said she was looking forward to learning more about glass because, "you see glass everywhere, but you don't really know too much about it." She also said that as a girl, she was looking forward to hearing more from women in the field about their experience and the opportunities out there for her.
"Being here is just about finding more things to do. This field is huge and I'm very open minded about what I want to do in the future," says Izabella.
Jackson C., another sophomore from the same school, said that he knows he wants to go into the trades, but hasn't decided specifically what he wants to specialize in. He hoped the day would inspire him and open up some new ideas about what his career could look like.
