ShanghaiApril 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The global market is more dynamic and variable than ever before. As a leading supplier in the automation industry, Festo is taking the 2026 Hannover Messe as a key opportunity to focus on how to grasp the challenges and opportunities in the new round of industrial transformation and to showcase its latest achievements in intelligent manufacturing and sustainable development. A major highlight of the Festo booth is the overarching theme of “Seamless Automation,” demonstrating how it paves the way for customers’ diverse industrial motion control needs through three dimensions: a seamless product portfolio, seamless connectivity, and a seamless digital experience. Another key showcase focuses on cutting-edge exploration in life science automation, presenting its solutions for medical technology and laboratory automation to the world.
Seamless Connectivity and High Compatibility Enable Full System Synergy
Festo’s seamlessly connected product portfolio, encompassing pneumatics, electric drives, software, and AI technologies, ensures smooth interoperability within systems. This is made possible by Festo’s open system architecture, which connects components of different technologies. This creates a continuous, uninterrupted data flow from individual components all the way up to higher-level control systems, including solutions from Festo and third-party suppliers. This seamless digital experience provides end-to-end support throughout the project lifecycle—from design and operation to maintenance—enabling seamless data transmission.
“With Seamless Automation, we are paving the way for all our customers’ industrial motion needs,” said Frank Notz, Chief Sales Officer of the Festo Group. Everything can work in synergy: whether on a mechanical or digital level, from hardware to software and accompanying learning resources—all backed by the deep technical expertise and application knowledge of Festo engineers and technicians.
The data flow remains consistent from individual components to the control system. Combined with the high compatibility afforded by open standards, the system ensures that devices, data, and hardware can recognize each other and automatically achieve seamless collaborative operation. Festo achieves this through:
- Standardized communication protocols across technologies
- A universal modular system architecture
- Consistent system design principles
- All modules built upon a unified architecture
Thanks to simplified and rapid product selection, design, and commissioning processes, users adopting Festo’s Seamless Automation solution can save valuable development and programming resources. The solution also includes seamless integration: the interconnection of data, information, technology, and application knowledge enables devices to autonomously recognize each other and work together. This achieves open connectivity between hardware, mechanics, and software, allowing for easy integration into customers’ equipment and systems.
Simultaneously, as the inventor of valve terminal technology, Festo has elevated it to a new level this year by introducing a valve terminal product integrated with artificial intelligence. This new, highly advanced solution combines AI with modern sensor technology in a compact system. Users can achieve flexible and precise pressure control via software without needing additional hardware components. Furthermore, this valve terminal becomes a significant data source: it can feed vast amounts of collected information back to higher-level systems, laying the groundwork for predictive maintenance and improving process and product quality.
Festo as an Automation Partner in Life Sciences
Festo’s innovations in the life sciences field will also be exhibited at this show. Through collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA) and the Technical University of Darmstadt, Festo will present two forward-looking future concepts based on microfluidic technology: one for automating CAR-T cell therapy and another for organ-on-a-chip automation, aiming to demonstrate the immense potential of automation technology in medical and pharmaceutical engineering.
The Diffusion Bonded Manifolds solution applied in these research projects has also helped Festo become one of the three nominees for the 2026 HERMES Award. The HERMES Award, presented at the Hannover Messe, is one of the world’s most prestigious industrial awards, honoring outstanding innovative technologies and products/solutions with a particularly high degree of innovation.
Through flexible automation solutions, Festo supports the translation of innovative therapies into clinical practice and provides advanced biotechnology for cutting-edge exploration. With the help of its portfolio in pneumatics, electric drives, software, and AI, Festo, together with its customers, realizes perfect seamless automation solutions.
Festo simplifies automation technology, transforming it into tangible, accessible experiences. This philosophy reduces process complexity and provides a clear path to intuitive solutions. You are cordially invited to visit the Festo booth in Hall 13 at the Hannover Messe for an immersive experience in the world of automation.
Reference Images:
Festo Group Chief Sales Officer Frank Notz
Inside the Cell Cassette
Festo Diffusion Bonded Manifolds
Festo Booth at Hannover Messe 2026