The more some things change the more they stay the same for the NAMM Show, which this week celebrates its 125th anniversary as the world’s largest annual trade event for the creators, manufacturers, retailers and distributors of music instruments, equipment, technology, sound, lighting and recording gear.
It will take place Tuesday through next Saturday, June 20-24, at the 1.8-million-square-foot Anaheim Convention Center — which has hosted the annual January event since 1976 — and in adjacent hotel ballrooms.
“After the first NAMM Show in 1902 in Baltimore, the board members realized they had to have more hitching posts for members’ horses. And today, parking is still a problem at the NAMM Show!” said Dan Del Fiorentino, who since 1999 has been the historian for the Carlsbad-based NAMM (short for the National Association of Music Merchants).
That first NAMM Show at a Baltimore YMCA drew a few hundred attendees, nearly all of them piano dealers. Today, NAMM has 15,400 global member companies — including Fender, Yamaha, Gibson and San Diego-based standouts as Taylor Guitars and Deering Banjos — and individual professionals that represent a global workforce of more than 475,000 employees.
This year’s NAMM Show will feature more than 1,650 exhibitors representing over 3,500 brands. It will offer myriad educational workshops, industry updates, 175 bands performing on seven stages, and the unveiling of numerous new instruments and products for retailers, distributors, musicians and other attendees to try out. There will also be a record number of influencers and content creators, who in recent years have started to supplant traditional media outlets covering the NAMM Show.
“When it comes to reaching consumers who are not NAMM members and musicians who play music as a hobby or semi-professionally, the influencers that cover new product rollouts at NAMM Show tell the story to tens of millions of people worldwide,” said NAMM President and CEO John T. Mlynczak.
“Our Creator’s Lounge — where influencers can attend intimate performances, check out new products and do interviews — will be twice as large as in 2025, which was the first time we had the lounge.”
This year’s NAMM Show will also see the return of an array of awards events, including the second annual Bass Magazine Awards Show, which is open to the public and this year is partnering with NAMM for the first time. To be held Thursday at the Observatory in Santa Ana, it will honor such notable bass guitarists as Marcus Miller, Mike Dirnt of Green Day, Les Claypool of Primus and Laura Lee Ochoa of Khruangbin. Dirnt’s Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented by former San Diegan Mark Hoppus of blink-182.
‘Spirit of togetherness’
“The NAMM Show is the only time each year that all of us in the global music industry can get together, shake hands and talk person to person,” said Bass Magazine Editor-in-Chief Jon D’Auria, who attended his first NAMM Show in 2008.
“It’s really about networking and making personal connections in such a communal environment, and NAMM is the connector that brings us all together in one space. Tens of thousands of people attend and you can really feel the spirit of togetherness.”
The Bass Magazine Awards will be in good company.
Also on Thursday, the 42nd annual TEC Awards will honor an array of top pro audio and sound recording veterans at the Anaheim Hilton’s Pacific Ballroom. Billy Corgan, the leader of Smashing Pumpkins, will receive the Tec Innovation Award.
On Friday at the same location, the 14th annual She Rocks Awards — which are produced by The Women’s International Music Network — will salute a dozen musicians and industry veterans. The honorees range from singer-songwriter Rachel Platten and TuneCore CEO Andreea Gleeson to Roland Global Product Marketing Manager for Wind Instruments Reina Ichihashi and former Prince and Jeff Beck bassist Rhonda Smith.
Other 2026 NAMM awards events this week will include the 24th annual Milestone Awards and Believe in Music Awards, the 14th annual Oral History Service Award and Roadies of Color’s 6th annual Lenny Award Ceremony
“This is really a people-oriented industry,” said NAMM historian Del Fiorentino.
“We also do an annual posthumous tribute program that honors people who have left us since our last annual NAMM gathering, primarily music-store owners and manufacturers. Doyle Dykes plays guitar and a Scottish bagpipe group comes out and plays. We keep the history alive.”
Industry Insights
Attendance should again top 60,000 for this year’s members-only confab, which NAMM veterans have described as “the Super Bowl of music trade shows,” and as the music world’s equivalent of both Disneyland and Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, “only bigger.”
None of the 2026 honorees and attendees will require hitching posts — so far as can be determined — a point NAMM head Mlynczak plans to slyly make during his Thursday morning “Industry Insights” keynote address in Anaheim. He’ll be joined by a number of guests, including noted multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, music educator, YouTube star and influencer Rick Beato.
“This is a perfect year to not only celebrate NAMM’s 125-year history but to talk to someone like Rick about the future, because he’s so knowledgeable,” said Mlynczak, who has headed NAMM since early 2023.
“We can also talk about music products that don’t exist anymore and about not having enough hitching posts in Baltimore — or parking places in Anaheim,124 years after the first NAMM Show.”
With such a landmark anniversary at hand, it comes as no surprise that a sense of nostalgia and longevity-fueled pride will be in the air this week for NAMM.
But the nonprofit trade organization’s year-round focus is very much on the present and future of the global music products industry it represents. And despite some unprecedented challenges in 2025, there was enough modest market growth for the industry to make it the fourth most profitable in NAMM history.
The total figures for 2025 won’t be released until March. But the 2024 tally was $17.8 billion for the global market — of which North America accounted for $8.2 billion — according to The Music Trades, the New Jersey-based publication that has tracked the global music-products industry since 1891.
“The fact that there was modest growth last year compared to 2024 is pretty remarkable,” said Paul Majeski, the publisher of The Music Trades.
“And the fact that there wasn’t a gigantic decline — and that the industry actually moved forward a little last year — is amazing considering all the problems with tariffs, credit, affordability and declining school enrollments in 2025.”
$500 million tariffs
By far the biggest challenge came last April when President Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” saw a massive increase on tariffs on products and raw materials imported into the U.S. For NAMM’s member companies, that meant enduring $500 million in tariffs in 2025, a staggering $350 million increase over what they paid in 2024.
What made the tariffs even more daunting is how suddenly they were imposed and that the amounts of the tariffs differed from product to product and country to country.
“Last January at the NAMM Show, my talking points were that we were back to stability and that 2025 would be a year of stability and growth,” NAMM honcho Mlynczak recalled.
“I can look back now and say I didn’t know what was about to happen. But none of us did. We had finally recovered from the booms and busts — the ‘COVID hangover’ — and thought we would be stable throughout the year. And we were, until about April 2 or whenever ‘Liberation Day’ happened,” Mlynczak said.
“That said, between COVID ups and down and tariff ups and downs, we did quite well in 2025. NAMM is known for getting through whatever is thrown at us by working together and making rational moves. And whenever there was a new post on (Trump’s) Truth Social or a (misleading) media report, we waited until we could vet them with documentation so that we could tell our members: ‘This is what actually happened and this is what you can expect.’ We support our members by being flexible and adaptable, and being flexible and adaptable is our new ‘normal,’” Mlynczak said.
NAMM’s nimbleness enabled it to provide its members with valuable information about the industry’s rapidly changing landscape in the wake of such large tariff increases.
“The fact that the industry has absorbed those tariffs without having an impact on consumers is amazing,” said The Music Trades publisher Majeski. “That’s not to say it hasn’t had a big impact on manufacturers — it’s a huge amount to absorb — but all those companies are private. So, while some prices have gone up, they haven’t gone up commensurate to the additional costs.”
NAMM’s ability to pivot under Mlynczak’s leadership is applauded by Majeski and by Tom Sumner, the president of Yamaha Corp. of America. The company, which was founded in Japan in 1887, has long been one of NAMM’s biggest exhibitors.
At this year’s NAMM Show, Yamaha will occupy 28,000 square feet on the Anaheim Convention Center’s third floor. About 300 employees will be on hand to promote Yamaha’s products and engage with retailers, creators, musicians and other NAMM Show attendees.
Music under (and with) the stars
As in previous years, the Yamaha Grand Plaza Stage will host free outdoor concerts for NAMM members. The 2026 lineup includes The War & Treaty, country songstress Alana Springsteen, 25-year-old piano prodigy Ethan Bortnick, an all-star band and several yet-to-be-announced worship-music favorites.
“John Mlynczak is doing a great job,” said Sumner, Yamaha’s president. “He’s definitely a big industry cheerleader who is rallying the international music industry. The way he attracts the global industry to the NAMM Show is really impressive. So is the way he has built the NAMM Show back — and in the right way — since the pandemic.”
Those sentiments are shared by Chris White, the president and CEO of White House of Music, which operates stores in three Wisconsin cities and provides weekly music lessons to 1,1150 students. Along with Sumner, he was on the search committee that selected Mlynczak to become the head of NAMM after its previous leader, Joe Lamond, retired three years ago.
“Joe did such a great job for 20-plus years, so it was definitely a challenge to replace him,” White said. “We had to find the right person and I’m thrilled with our selection of John who brings the same passion for music that Joe did.”
Yamaha, an international powerhouse, saw modest growth in 2025, while White House of Music had its best year ever. Both companies made it through the COVID pandemic shutdown, which began shortly after the 2020 NAMM Show drew a record attendance of more than 115,000.
The 2021 NAMM Show was held entirely online, while the 2022 edition was a streamlined, safety-first event that was reduced in size to occupy only half of the Anaheim Convention Center with exhibits spaced farther apart. The show has regained traction in each successive year, although it remains to be seen if attendance will again top 115,000, as it did in 2020 — or if it should.
“Last year’s NAMM Show had 63,000 people and that felt like the right amount,” Sumner said.
Intriguingly, while many predicted that the COVID shutdown would sound the death knell for much of the music instrument and equipment industries, North American sales for 2021 rose 20 percent to set an all-time record of $8,906,561,000.
“It was a banner year,” said The Music Trades publisher Majeski. “And considering the impact of tariffs in 2025, things are looking pretty good for 2026.”
‘A year of unknowns’
NAMM head Mlynczak is pragmatic about the future.
In addition to constantly meeting with NAMM members across the nation and abroad throughout the year, he spends time lobbying on behalf of music industry manufacturers and retailers in Washington, D.C. He is also a strong proponent of music education and a measured voice of reason regarding the impact of tariffs and the pros and cons of the increasing use of AI in music.
“There are a lot of mixed signals on inflation, but people bought instruments and music gear during the Christmas holidays and that’s always a good sign,” Mlynczak said.
“The tariffs affected everybody in our industry and it’s been a difficult year to figure out supply chain and manufacturing issues here and abroad. But our industry is incredibly resilient. And once the unpredictability of the tariff rates stopped — or at least paused for now — companies have time to make a plan.”
Mlynczak is now awaiting the Supreme Court’s pending ruling on the legality of the tariffs imposed by President Trump.
“We know that their ruling will have an impact, whichever way it goes, we will work through it,” he said. “We’re coming off a challenging year and going into a year of unknowns, but we’re ready to help our NAMM members. And at the NAMM Show, companies who are competitors come together for the good of the industry.”
The 2026 NAMM Show
When: Educational seminars and training sessions will be held from 11 a.m. to 3:30 pm. Tuesday, and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday; the trade show is from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, and next Friday, and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 24.
Where: Anaheim Convention Center, 800 West Katella Ave., Anaheim
Tickets: The NAMM Show is a private, members-only trade show. However qualified attendees can find more information and register at namm.org/thenammshow/attend