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Text: James Woodcock
The question I was set for this article was ‘What does the data from the first six months of 2026 tell us about the adoption of industrial AM?” It's a question that turned out to be surprisingly difficult to answer. The short answer is 'not very much, because that data largely hasn't been fully collated, analyzed and disseminated yet. Alas, I didn't think that answer would fly with the editor, so I set out to see what I could find out that would shed some light on H1 2026 and the direction of the industry at large.
To do this I spoke with AMPOWER, whose annual report is built on more than 300 interviews across the supply chain; CECIMO (European Association of Manufacturing Technologies), which surveys the European industry every six months through AM Europe; AMUK (Additive Manufacturing UK and part of the MTA– Manufacturing Technologies Association), which surveys its UK membership; and ADDLIANCE, which federates Europe's national and regional AM hubs, networks and research institutes.
The data collected by different organizations comes in two types: Measured, retrospective data, meaning what actually sold and to whom, runs a long way behind; Forward-looking sentiment, where companies are asked what they expect of the coming six months, is available now. Most of what follows relies on the second kind.
There is no single number
Perhaps it should come as no surprise there isn't a single, clean, unified data point that we can rely on as the signal of industry health. This is a consequence of the increasingly specialized and thus fragmented nature of AM. It's not just a split between metals and polymers, or consumer and industrial anymore. Companies are increasingly gaining specialisms in specific end markets, and their fates are tied more closely to the waxing and waning of those vertical markets.
Of course there are single numbers touted for the health of the industry. A lot of them, in fact, and they're all different. Some analyses rely on executive interviews, others on tracking Harmonized System codes to see what's shipped, others on member surveys. What's measured, how it's measured, what analysis is applied, how responses are weighted all feed into Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) and market size figures that differ enormously. Seen in isolation each of these figures can only give us so much, but because they each pull from overlapping populations of respondents, together they can give us a useful picture of trends and expectations, if not cold hard data.
To get a true high-level industry-wide picture therefore we must look at a more granular level and build up to a bigger picture. In this, there are some consistent signals that give us a good indication of how 2026 has gone so far and expectations over the next six months. This is especially true for European and North American markets, with less visibility on Asian and rest-of-world markets.
Order books are always right
Several of the roughly 30 technology providers in the International Advanced Manufacturing 3D Hub, a Spanish AM consortium, had met their full-year sales budgets within the first seven months of 2026. That's according to David Adrover Iglesias, who manages the hub alongside his work with ADDLIANCE, and he was clear it wasn't a single outlier. AMUK's Josh Dugdale also reported a UK polymer system supplier that had already hit its full-year machine sales quota by the time we spoke in September, this following on from a very challenging 2025. Even at a sample size of two, that's several OEMs who have rallied significantly in 2026.
This is of course self-reported sales figures, with no information on whether the targets were higher, lower or the same as previous years.
The show floor says something similar, with a caveat of its own. AMUK reported more business written at MACH, the UK manufacturing technology exhibition, than is normal for the event, with exhibitor numbers holding and visitor numbers slightly up on previous editions. That's manufacturing as a whole rather than AM specifically, and the floor space those exhibitors took was smaller. Formnext tells the same story in a different way, with roughly the same number of exhibitors across a smaller overall space, which means companies buying less space rather than fewer companies turning up.
Data lags vibes
It's often said countries can talk themselves into a recession, which is a good example of how people’s perception and feelings can be ahead or behind of the hard data. An example of this can also be seen in comparing the data to the perceptions of AM, which leads to a situation where there's disagreement on temporal as well as qualitative impacts on the industry. AMPOWER measured an effective flatline in 2024, with a modest 5.6% growth in 2025. But AMUK's experience points to 2025 as the harder year, with a resurgence in activity since the start of 2026, and ADDLIANCE describes this year in similarly strong terms. Even AMPOWER's Matthias Schmidt-Lehr, talking rather than publishing, described the past two years as "a bit flatline".
This could be a matter of scope: AMPOWER has a more global leaning than the regional AMUK and ADDLIANCE membership, and it could also be the time shift between data and expectations. This is commonly seen in trade shows; the state of the show today represents people’s expectations 12 months ago.
Where is the growth coming from?
So, there is little consensus on the specifics, but the trend can be seen to be 2024/2025 worse, 2026 better. Driving that positivity is (drumroll for the least shocking revelation of the piece) is defence. You'd have to have been living under a rock to miss that one. Defence organizations are looking at AM to help with legacy sustainment, while the next generation of war fighting is leaning away from high-value assets to drones (air, sea and land) hypersonic and rocketry — all places AM can play a significant role.
AMPOWER reports that defence and space equipment sales grew by more than 20% a year over the last four years, with growth of close to 19% a year forecast to 2030. CECIMO added defence, energy and consumer goods as specific sectors for the first time in its Spring 2026 survey, all showing positive sentiment. And defence is pulling in all of AM, though not at the same time. Metals saw the first big wave of interest, but as drones become an ever greater area of focus, the polymer processes are seeing heightened interest too.
Automotive remains the outlier at -17, against +67 for aerospace and space. CECIMO's figures are net balances: the share of respondents expecting an increase minus the share expecting a decrease, looking six months ahead. A positive number means more companies expect growth than expect decline. It does not mean the market will grow by that amount. Again, if you catch any European news, automotive won't be a huge surprise.
So, all in on defence?
Interestingly, no. This is a sign of a maturing industry, but OEMs are drawing up their 2027 plans with a broadening of target markets. CECIMO has sentiment for medical, dental, tooling and molds at +47, having been +9 at the last asking. Machinery is up to +33 from +9, with chemicals and pharmaceuticals +45 from -2. Expectations again, rather than sales.
Adrover Iglesias sees the same thing from the inside. With budgets more secure this year, he says technology providers have turned back to marketing, and in particular to activity targeted at specific sectors: medical, healthcare, drones and aerospace as well as defence. The reasoning he gives is refreshingly unsentimental. They want a broader spread of target markets for next year, because if the defence trend moves elsewhere they don't want to lose out.
The defence wave will be transient and not everyone will be a winner, so looking back to other industries makes a great deal of sense. It's also the sort of forward planning this industry hasn't always been good at, which is reason enough to note it.
The growth is at the cheap end
Here's the part that should give the industry pause.
AMPOWER's 2026 report includes desktop polymer equipment priced under €10,000 for the first time, and what it found there is startling. That segment has been growing at over 30% a year while industrial equipment managed 6-8%. By 2025, desktop revenue was nearly on par with industrial metal and polymer equipment combined, and AMPOWER estimates that Bambu Lab alone now turns over more than €1 billion.
AMPOWER's own conclusion is more telling than the figures: "Industrial customers increasingly choose to invest in low-cost printers rather than typical industrial grade machines, which come at a multiple of the investment cost yet offer limited additional benefit, if any, for certain settings." The report calls the habit of classifying these machines as consumer or prosumer kit misleading, and points to print farms of several thousand desktop printers now servicing industrial demand.
AMUK's example fits neatly. A UK service provider won a Defence contract that it is fulfilling on desktop-class FDM machines. Nothing exotic or qualified to within an inch of its life, but ‘good enough’, and at the right scale.
If you've spent any time around sustainment work this makes sense. A cockpit knob that snapped off a forty-year-old airframe was plastic when it was made and only needs to be plastic now. Titanium powder bed fusion isn’t needed to solve that problem.
CECIMO's investment data points the same way. Intentions are strongest for materials and feedstock and weakest for research and development, with growth expectations attaching most often to end-use serial parts and prototyping. An industry buying throughput rather than invention is one that reckons it already has the processes it needs.
Lower cost system sales benefit Chinese OEMs
Over 90% of those desktop machines originate in China, according to AMPOWER, though the customer base is more evenly distributed across Europe, the USA and APAC. At the industrial end the picture is healthier for the west. More than 80% of industrial AM machines come from companies headquartered in the USA, China or Germany, and Chinese OEMs still sell mainly into their domestic market and regional neighbors.
The direction of travel is clear enough though. The number of companies offering laser powder bed fusion grew from 96 in 2024 to 107 in 2025, with China in particular seeing a surge of new entrants, from startups through to large established manufacturers. The top ten metal PBF OEMs now hold 78.3% of that market, down from 80% the year before.
So, the fastest growth is at the end of the market Europe largely doesn't build, and the end Europe does build is getting more crowded. European adoption and European capability are not traveling in the same direction.
Technology isn’t the answer
CECIMO asked respondents which single change would most help their AM activities grow. The most popular answer was not a technology, a material or a process. It was stronger European Union industrial policy for the sector. Easier access to financing came second.
Adrover Iglesias was blunt about why this sentiment has arisen now. Last year, the sense that China and the United States were further ahead was a feeling. "This year it's not a feeling, it's a fear.”
He also points to a more mundane fight. European project funding that once flowed to robotics, photonics and additive is shifting toward AI, driving the need for coordinated action to keep AM front and center for investors.
Popular evergreen topic ‘skills, training and recruitment’ also plays a part. CECIMO records a balance of -44 for respondents saying skilled labor availability is affecting their activities, with 36% finding it hard to hire qualified staff. After years of struggling to get technology providers interested in university programs and training, Adrover Iglesias says the industry has mobilized around skills this year almost without being asked. He puts it down to budgets being available. I suspect it also helps that the constraint has started costing money.
What they expect next
All of which brings us to the six months ahead, where the balances have moved sharply. Expectations for machine sales into export markets went from -4 in the previous round to +35. Export services went from +4 to +71. Domestic products and produced parts doubled, +33 to +66. The AM Confidence Index rose to 62, and the balance for overall business performance sits at +38.
There's room to absorb it, too. Median capacity utilization among respondents is 63%, with a balance of +14 expecting it to rise. A sector running at under two thirds utilization and reporting sharply improved export expectations has somewhere to put the work.
Beyond that, two verticals are worth watching. Energy is the obvious one. Schmidt-Lehr points out that directed energy deposition spent years on the waiting list while R&D teams worked through powder bed fusion qualification. Those teams now have the budget and the bandwidth for the next process, with gas turbines among the targets.
The other is high-value electronics, where AMPOWER names applications such as the Apple Watch case in print, and where Schmidt-Lehr says projected orders from major players now run into the thousands of machines rather than the hundreds.
The same work, different words
Three years ago, sustainability was the topic. Every stand had a message about it, every panel had a session on it, and a decent chunk of my own working life was spent helping companies talk about it. Today, nobody mentions it. The work hasn't stopped. It's being sold as resource efficiency, supply chain resilience and domestic capability instead. Same processes, same benefits, different words.
So, back to the question I was set. What does the data from the first six months of 2026 tell us about the adoption of industrial AM?
The direction is up and the confidence behind it looks to be unambiguous. The money is going into capacity rather than invention. The fastest growth is at the end of the market Europe largely doesn't build, and the industry's biggest asks are no longer technical ones.
For the numbers on a spreadsheet data perspective, we can come back to the question early next year and see how close to the mark we were.
