IFA 2026: Looking beyond the smart home with Haier

From AI-powered appliances to humanoid robots, Haier is using IFA 2026 to showcase its vision of the "intelligent home". Euronews spoke to Haier Europe CEO Neil Tunstall about what comes after the smart home — and how soon some of these ideas could become reality. "The Future is Now" is the motto of this year's IFA. Chinese home appliance and consumer electronics group Haier has brought its own take on that theme to Berlin, under the slogan "Home of Intelligent Possibilities". The company is using IFA 2026 to lay out its vision of intelligent living — a home where connected appliances and AI do not just assist, but anticipate. Euronews spoke to Haier Europe CEO Neil Tunstall about what comes after the smart home, and how soon some of these ideas could become reality. Beyond the smart home The idea is to go one step beyond the smart home towards what Haier calls the intelligent home, a system built around people rather than products. Instead of putting individual devices at the centre, the company says it wants to build connected systems around the people using them and their everyday needs. A large part of that vision is about making technology more intuitive and reducing the amount of thought people have to put into everyday household tasks. "I think in the area of the cooking, the possibility for the product to see what's inside, to make sure it's done to the right way, to take out the variation of people not being so confident in putting something in the oven and hoping it's cooked," Tunstall said. "The product now will do that for you. And that hopefully means then that we can actually enjoy eating much more at home." Sustainability in the intelligent home But making everyday life easier is not the only reason Haier is investing in smarter and more connected appliances. Sustainability is also a key consideration, according to Tunstall. "If you think about the whole cycle, so from the manufacturing, from the logistics, the lorries moving around, the biggest one for our industry is actually use, because we are electrical products, so we use a lot of electricity and water," he said. For Tunstall, reducing the environmental impact of appliances also means looking at how they are used once they are in people's homes, with smart technology helping manage energy consumption more efficiently. Haier's "end-to-end innovation" Sustainability is also being considered at the production stage. Haier describes its approach as "end-to-end innovation," with AI and data being used across different stages of developing, manufacturing and delivering its products. "We have mass of big data where we can understand how do people use products, which programmes do they use? How do they load the washing machine? What do they do? All this data comes together to allow us then to create new use cases and new things," Tunstall said. According to Tunstall, the aim is to use that information not only to develop products but also to make the way they are manufactured and delivered more efficient. To continue developing these technologies, Haier is also planning significant investment in the coming years. "Our next five years is spending 13 billion on AI, on robotics, on R&D, advanced engineering, and all of those things," Tunstall said. Tunstall says the investment is intended to speed up the development and rollout of new technologies across Haier's product range. "We want to innovate to bring better value to consumers and to our trade partners. And that 13 billion will be accelerating how fast we can bring innovation to market. Across all our product categories, we can create new ideas, new use cases faster as a result of this investment." 'We do not want to replace the human' Tunstall has a clear vision of where these developments could lead. Looking further into the future, connected devices could eventually be joined by humanoid robots. For him, the key is ensuring that the human element does not get lost along the way, avoiding a "science fiction" scenario in which robots simply take over. "We're not trying to replace the human," Tunstall said. "But there are basic tasks that robotics can do. Already robot vacuum cleaners, robots cutting the grass. And some of the basic things that we need to do ourselves, the robots will be able to do it for us together with AI." And when it comes to the timeframe, Tunstall believes this future may not be as far away as it seems. "I think you will see our industry creating this innovation very rapidly. Things move faster than we think." The technology may not be fully there yet, but Tunstall is optimistic that it will not take long to reach consumers, not just overseas, but also here in Europe. "We have to commercialise them and bring them to market, so they're not here right now, but they are going to be here pretty soon in this industry." From innovation to the market But bringing new technology to market also means adapting it to very different consumers. For Tunstall, Haier's global scale allows the company to develop technologies and components across markets while adapting the products built around them to local habits and needs. "The Chinese consumer cooks something completely different to the British consumer, as you can imagine," he told Euronews. And those differences do not only exist between continents. Tunstall says there is no single European consumer either. "The French consumer is different to the European, the English consumer very different Italians, so even within Europe we don't have one consumer, we have many different cases and we need to make sure then that we are ... truly listening to the individual consumer and giving them the product they want." For now, some of Haier's ideas remain concepts. But Tunstall suggests visitors may not have to wait too long to see which of them make the transition from the exhibition floor to the market. "We'll be here next year as well, perhaps launching some of those things that we're just showing as concept today."