I’ve been attending the annual High End show for almost 30 years. I started going in the late 1990s, when it was held at the Kempinski Hotel in Frankfurt, Germany. In 2004, the show moved to the Munich Order Center (MOC) in Munich, where it remained through 2025. Since I first started going, I’ve attended every High End show that’s been held.
Now the show has moved again—not just to a different city, but to a different country. Beginning in 2026, High End is being held in Vienna, Austria, at the Austria Center Vienna (ACV). This year’s event runs from June 4 to 7.
The obvious question that’s been on my mind—and on many others’ minds—is: will the move matter?
High End 2003 in Frankfurt
It’s an important question, because High End is considered by many in the industry to be the world’s most influential hi‑fi show. What’s more, the hi‑fi industry relies on it, at least in part, as a key commercial and networking hub.
If I think back to when the move from Frankfurt to Munich was announced, there was a surprising amount of backlash. Many people believed the change would damage the show. The Frankfurt venue had a certain hotel-based charm, while the MOC seemed more corporate and commercial. They feared High End would lose the enthusiast-based personality that the hotel location had helped give it.
In the end, maybe High End did lose a little of that charm. But it also gained a great deal.
The move to Munich transformed High End into a far larger and more business-oriented event, which ultimately proved to be a boon for the hi‑fi industry (nowadays, two of the event’s four days are for trade only). I distinctly remember walking through the MOC’s atriums in 2004 and running into company representatives who had skipped exhibiting at that year’s show to see whether the new location would succeed. Seeing its success, every one of them told me the same thing afterward: they’d be back in 2005. And they were.
High End 2004 in Munich
From there, High End grew in importance. By the mid-2010s, it had begun rivaling—and eventually surpassing—the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as the global gathering place for the high-end-audio industry. Manufacturers, distributors, reviewers, and consumers came from all over the world. The MOC worked because it had halls, atriums, and upstairs rooms that suited the unique requirements of an audio show unusually well. Munich as a city also worked during those years because it had plenty of hotels and restaurants available, and once our coverage teams figured out the subway system, we found it easy to get around. Flying there was relatively simple for most attendees as well.
Had circumstances allowed it, I suspect the show could have remained in Munich indefinitely.
But remaining at the MOC apparently wasn’t possible. I’ve heard various explanations over the years as to why High End could no longer happen there, but the details don’t matter much now. What matters is that the event had to move—and finding another suitable venue in Germany reportedly proved difficult for the High End Society, the organization that puts on the event.
What they did find was the ACV in Vienna, which was already hosting the High End Society’s Finest Audio Show Vienna each November. On paper the choice makes sense, and not only because a hi‑fi show has repeatedly been held there. The ACV is Austria’s largest congress and event center. Although I don’t know how High End 2026 will be laid out, the venue claims to offer more than 26,000 square meters of exhibition and networking space across five levels, with 21 halls and 134 meeting rooms. In other words, this isn’t some small fallback venue. It is a serious convention center in a major European capital.
Vienna itself is no small market either. The city had just over two million residents as of January 1, 2026, making it larger than Munich proper, which had about 1.6 million residents at the same time. Vienna is also a highly international city, with strong connections to Central and Eastern Europe. That could help High End broaden its reach.
But there’s one major issue that keeps coming up in conversations I’ve had throughout the industry: Germany itself.
One of the large MOC exhibit halls during High End 2025
Even though High End became an undeniably international show, as well as the pre-eminent business-to-business show in the world, Germany remained its backbone. Not surprisingly, most of the consumers attending were from Germany. A substantial number of exhibitors—both manufacturers and distributors—were German as well, which many people hadn’t realized before this move was announced and people in the industry, including me, started discussing it. High End was a decidedly German show for the world.
That raises the real question: will those people and companies still go to Vienna?
I suspect most German consumers won’t. Vienna may not look far away on a map, but Munich to Vienna is about 400 kilometers by road, with train travel taking roughly four hours. That is manageable for industry people with appointments, budgets, and reasons to be there. But for casual consumers who once drove or took a train into Munich for a day or two at the show, Vienna becomes a much bigger commitment.
There are some Austrian manufacturers and distributors—Pro‑Ject Audio Systems is headquartered in Vienna—but not nearly as many as in Germany. As for German manufacturers and distributors, I genuinely don’t know if they will still exhibit or even come, since Austria is, in fact, another country. Vienna is also farther away than Germany for attendees coming from countries like England and Denmark—which both have a substantial number of audio manufacturers—and that has to factor in as well.
But again, I don’t know what the outcome will be, and it seems no one else knows either—though many people have opinions. So, since the move was announced, I’ve been asking people throughout the industry—but mainly in Europe, since they’re closer to the action—what they think will happen. What I found was a tremendous amount of uncertainty, but also shifting opinions.
Munich is synonymous with beer
Last year, the informal consensus among company representatives in Europe I spoke to was roughly 60/40 in favor of the move succeeding. Those optimistic about Vienna believed the reputation and momentum of High End itself would carry the event forward. The skeptics felt the loss of German consumer traffic and business support would be difficult to overcome.
That split shifted closer to 50/50 toward the end of last year, as even some High End proponents became wary about whether the German business base would support it and enough business from other countries—particularly Austria—could make up the difference. They also came to realize that although Vienna is a big city, there’s no guarantee consumers there will be as motivated to attend as the German consumers were in Munich.
More recently, the mood has tilted even further toward skepticism. The latest informal read I’ve gotten is closer to 60 percent believing the move will hurt the show, and 40 percent believing things will work out fine.
Part of that growing concern stems from complaints I’ve heard about the ACV compared to the MOC. Some say the rooms are better for displaying and demonstrating equipment in, while many others disagree. At the same time, there’s also been talk that some companies wanting to exhibit couldn’t secure space because the event sold out. The High End Society has said the 2026 Vienna show is fully booked, which can be read two ways: as proof that exhibitors still see High End as essential, or as a warning that the new venue may already be under pressure before the first Vienna edition has even opened.
Belvedere Palace in Vienna
What will happen? Will High End in Vienna be as strong as High End in Munich was? Like I said, no one knows, and that’s exactly how it felt back in 2004 before the move from Frankfurt to Munich. The big difference then, however, was that it was a move within Germany, while this one moves the show out of Germany. It’s not quite the same.
But this is all just me and others speculating—and I’m simply putting the information out there for consideration. What I do know is that on the day this article publishes, SoundStage! Ultra senior editor Jason Thorpe and I will be boarding a plane headed for Vienna to find out for ourselves. And, as always, we’ll report on the equipment we see and hear on SoundStage! Global—and we’ll also let you know if the move to Vienna was a good one. After a year of wondering, we’ll finally have an answer once the High End Vienna 2026 show is complete.
. . . Doug Schneider
das@soundstage.com
