Learntec 2026 - Our Report from the Open edX Booth

Abstract-Technology, Edly & Raccoongang

Learntec 2026 is behind us, and before anything else we want to thank everyone who visited our booth - those who came to learn more about Open edX, to reconnect, and in particular our German partners, clients and network contacts who generously shared their impressions of the fair, their views on technology, and what stood out to them. That collective feedback is the backbone of this report.

35 Years of Learntec

This edition marked the 35th anniversary of one of Europe's most established digital education events - 340 exhibitors from 20 nations, two formats running in parallel. The trade fair (Fachmesse) offered hands-on encounters with the latest in learning management, extended reality and AI-powered training solutions. The congress went deeper, with strategic sessions on AI readiness including international keynotes from Laura Overton and Andrew Smith.

We also looked back at our own history with Learntec: our first visit was in 2018, together with Patrick Neubert and Polarstern. It is remarkable to see how his work has since evolved into AcademyOS. Patrick, you remain an important and credible voice in the German EdTech ecosystem - we are proud that our collaboration continues.

DELINA Awards 2026

A highlight of every Learntec is the DELINA award, the initiative led by Sunna Eichler recognising outstanding digital education projects across four categories.

This year's winners were:

• Neue Grundschule Potsdam for their "KI-Kompass Grundschule", anchoring AI didactically in primary education for self-directed learning from the earliest stages.
• ZHAW Zentrum für Innovative Didaktik in the Higher Education category for "Educational Design Toolkit myScripting", a collaborative, evidence-based tool for designing digital learning settings.
• Bayerische Verwaltungsschule for their "Digital Learning Lab", setting new standards for modern learning culture in the public sector through thoughtful integration of AI, VR and hybrid formats.
• Memorium Nürnberger Prozesse in the Society & Lifelong Learning category for the serious game "Tribunal 45 – Working on Justice", combining historical depth with interactive knowledge transfer.

We want to highlight the Higher Education winner in particular. myScripting (https://myscripting.zhaw.ch) is an electronic support tool for scripting instructional processes, enabling educators to design face-to-face, blended and online courses quickly and systematically. Congratulations to Prof. Dr. Claude Müller Werder and the entire team. Pivotally, the tool is open source - if you work as a course designer on Open edX, we encourage you to explore it. Thank you again, Prof. Dr. Claude Müller Werder, for building something the whole community can use.

We also want to highlight the presentation of the Erasmus+ project GamesonBoard, which brought a valuable perspective on game-based learning to the congress programme.

The Central Theme: Artificial Intelligence - Everywhere, for Everything

It comes as no surprise that AI dominated the conversation at Learntec 2026. Every solution on the floor carried an AI component, without exception - across schools, corporate academies and universities alike. The themes ranged from AI as a universal assistant, to bias in educational AI, to autonomous agents for operational efficiency, robotics, content and video creation, image generation, translation and adaptive personalisation. One particularly striking application was the real-time translation of the entire Learntec programme, delivered through AI-powered video tools.

Yet beneath the enthusiasm, a more critical question was present throughout: where are we actually heading?

We can already build an AI agent that logs in on our behalf, confirms our attendance, collects our results and harvests our certificates. That is not a hypothetical - it is here today. And it raises a fundamental concern: if AI learns for us, what happens to genuine learning? We are fascinated by what AI can do, but we are not yet critical enough about what dependency on it means - particularly as the large players will inevitably raise prices on what has so far been heavily subsidised technology. Access to AI will not remain universal, and if education becomes dependent on costly proprietary systems, it risks becoming yet another axis along which society divides.

The pedagogical answer, in our view, lies in regulated, transparent use. We need to know where data comes from and how it is used. We need to be able to build smaller, purpose-built educational language models. We cannot allow our communications to be silently harvested to train commercial systems. And above all, we need a living, evolving culture of learning - one that develops human capability, not just AI capability.

The LMS: Transformed, Not Replaced

One of the clearest takeaways from this year's conversations reinforces something we have been observing for some time: generative AI is not replacing the LMS - it is transforming what the LMS does. Institutions still need a platform that organises courses, controls access, manages grades and integrates with surrounding systems. No credible alternative has emerged that handles all of this. What is changing is what the LMS enables: AI-powered feedback, automated course design, real-time learning analytics.

The platform layer is also becoming the primary vehicle through which AI reaches students, learners and faculty and institutions - meaning the strategic importance of the LMS has increased, not diminished. As the Spring 2026 LMS Market Analysis from Phil Hill & Associates notes, this structural position protects the category even as individual vendors face pressure.

Online learning adoption also remains highly uneven across Europe. The Netherlands, Spain and Scandinavia show the highest rates, while France, Italy and Germany continue to lag. Countries with a strong pre-pandemic online learning culture accelerated during and after it; those with a low baseline saw a temporary rise, then decline. This shapes LMS demand - and opportunity - very differently across sub-regions.

AI in the LMS: Mostly at the Surface, Rarely at the Core

Speaking directly with visitors, exhibitors and LMS vendors across the floor, one pattern became impossible to ignore: while AI is present in virtually every platform, its depth is still surprisingly limited.

The dominant use case? Chatbots and assistants. Reactive tools that answer a learner's question, surface a relevant piece of content, or nudge someone who has fallen behind. Useful, certainly - but not transformative.

The more sophisticated capabilities - adaptive learning pathways, predictive dropout analytics, truly personalised assessments that evolve in real time - remain largely aspirational in practice, or available only in early-stage, demo-grade implementations.

More tellingly, the overwhelming majority of AI features being showcased were oriented toward the supply side of learning: helping authors generate course content faster, giving instructors better dashboards to track engagement, and giving administrators efficiency gains in compliance reporting and user management. These are real gains, and we do not dismiss them. But the learner - the person the entire system is supposed to serve - remains largely on the receiving end of AI decisions they have no visibility into, and no influence over.

This is not a criticism of the vendors. It reflects where the market is right now. Procurement decisions in most organisations are made by L&D managers and platform administrators, not learners. So it is natural that AI investment follows that decision-making logic. But it is worth naming clearly: the AI in most LMS platforms today is built for the people who build and manage learning, not primarily for the people who do the learning. Closing that gap is, in our view, the most important frontier for the next phase of LMS development - and it is one where Open edX, with its flexibility and open architecture, is particularly well positioned to lead.