Smart Glasses Are Ready for a Breakthrough Year

The category is reaching an inflection point as more brands release style-conscious frames equipped with capabilities like AI, according to the BoF-McKinsey State of Fashion 2026.

Early wearables appeared in the 2000s with GPS devices like Garmin’s ForeRunner 101. The breakthrough in the wearables category came with smart watches, which grew from around 15 percent of the watch market in 2016 to 35 to 40 percent today.Fashion players have also entered the space, with brands like Tag Heuer, Tissot and Louis Vuitton launching their own lines.

However, the performance of other wearables is mixed. Smart bracelets, once 40 percent of the basic activity wearables market in 2016, now account for less than 10 percent. Smart rings, dominated by Oura, which had an 80 percent market share in 2023, are becoming popular — Oura has sold over 5.5 million rings as of September 2025, with more than half of those sold in the preceding year.

Smart eyewear is poised for breakout growth in 2026

Despite several false starts over the past decade, smart eyewear is finally gaining traction as hardware advances and multi-modal AI make them sleeker and more functional. EssilorLuxottica reported in February 2025 that Ray-Ban Meta sales had reached two million pairs and announced plans to increase production capacity to 10 million annual units by the end of 2026.