The lighting industry maintains strong prosperity in 2026. Government procurement reached 4.139 billion RMB in the first quarter, including 594 projects worth over one million RMB, with a batch of large-scale billion-yuan projects landing intensively and showing obvious head enterprise advantages. The market structure continues to optimize: urban renewal and renovation, cultural tourism night economy upgrading, and county-level lighting popularization have become three core growth engines. Among them, stock renovation projects account for more than 45%, releasing strong demand for lighting in old residential communities, industrial parks, bridges and roads.
The cultural tourism night market performs particularly well. Relevant data shows that national night tourism consumption exceeded 4.2 trillion RMB in 2025, with lighting projects contributing over 35%. Benchmark projects such as Slender West Lake in Yangzhou and Everlasting Tang Dynasty City in Xi’an integrate cultural narration with light and shadow technology, attracting more than 100,000 tourists daily and proving the commercial value of lighting plus cultural tourism. The county-level market has become a new blue ocean. Driven by rural revitalization policies, lighting coverage in third- and fourth-tier cities and counties is rising rapidly, releasing a hundred-billion-level incremental market.
In 2026, large-scale application is realized for LED flexible neon seamless splicing technology. Adopting dual-core design of optical seamless and structural seamless, the special connector bends with the same radian as the lamp body, achieving over 95% uniformity of light effect at the joint, completely solving dark areas and breakpoint problems of traditional lamps. The technology perfectly adapts to special-shaped scenarios such as wave curtain walls of shopping malls, spherical domes of cultural venues, and broken-line facades of office buildings, presenting an advanced aesthetic effect of seeing light without seeing lamps.
Intelligent control has upgraded from remote dimming to AI perception linkage. Sensors including millimeter-wave radar, infrared thermal imaging and Wi-Fi probes real-timely monitor pedestrian flow, vehicle flow and ambient brightness, automatically adjusting lamp brightness, color temperature and dynamic effects. A bridge lighting project in Shenzhen adopts multi-sensor linkage of light, pedestrian and traffic, turning off lights automatically in daytime, lowering brightness during off-peak hours at night, and increasing brightness in bad weather, achieving an energy saving rate of over 30%. Dynamic induction nodes deployed in Everlasting Tang Dynasty City automatically enhance lighting and launch guiding animations during peak crowds, improving evacuation efficiency by 37%.
3D projection, AR interaction and dynamic pixel programming deeply empower cultural tourism scenarios, breaking the limitations of traditional static lighting. Fuzhou Ancient Town integrates red lanterns with digital light and shadow, creating an immersive ancient town scroll night view with 36 beam lights and 4 projectors. After renovation of ancient towns in Hangzhou, lighting automatically adjusts according to crowd density, greatly extending tourists’ average staying time from less than 40 minutes. AIGC design tools are widely used to quickly generate lighting schemes by inputting building photos, boosting design efficiency by 80%.
Driven by dual-carbon policies and mandatory national codes for building energy conservation and renewable energy utilization, high-efficiency LED, MiniLED and MicroLED become mainstream light sources. The proportion of products with high luminous efficiency, low power consumption and long lifespan over 50,000 hours rises rapidly. Outdoor lamps generally adopt IP66 waterproof grade and full silicone potting technology, operating stably under extreme temperatures from -40℃ to 60℃. Aluminum alloy housing and tempered glass feature aging and corrosion resistance, fully meeting long-term outdoor application demands.
The era of homogenized low-price competition is ending, and non-standard customization has become the key for enterprises to break through. For special scenarios such as ancient buildings, cultural tourism landmarks and special-shaped architectures, lamp manufacturers provide exclusive modeling, color temperature and light control design to deeply integrate lighting with architecture and local culture. Leading manufacturers launch special-shaped connectors and high-CRI flexible wall washers to restore architectural texture and color accurately, satisfying customized demands of high-end projects.
Integrated and modular design becomes mainstream. Lamps integrate drive, control and communication modules, simplifying installation and cutting construction costs. The dual reinforcement structure of buckle locking and sealant solves loosening and water ingress of traditional joints, ensuring no displacement and no water leakage in long-term outdoor use, reducing O&M costs by over 40%.
The industry still faces three major challenges: overcapacity of low-end products, uneven quality standards and shortage of professional talents. Some enterprises cut corners and bid at ultra-low prices, resulting in lamps dimming quickly after only one year of operation and disrupting the market order. Meanwhile, remarkable opportunities remain: continuous policy support, accelerated technological iteration and upgraded scenario demand are pushing the industry to transform from price competition to competition in technology, quality and service.
Clear development paths for enterprises:Focus on R&D of core technologies such as intelligent control, seamless splicing and green energy saving to build differentiated products;Strictly control product quality with national standard materials and standardized quality control, providing long-term warranty and building brand reputation;Deliver one-stop services of design, product supply, construction and operation, focusing on three major tracks: cultural tourism, urban renewal and county-level markets;Embrace cross-border integration with AI, digital light and shadow and cultural tourism operation, expanding new scenarios such as lighting plus AR, lighting plus interaction and lighting plus culture.
Evolving from simple brightening to intelligence, green development, aesthetic upgrading and vitality activation, the lighting industry is accelerating transformation in 2026 driven by market expansion, technological iteration and policy guidance. Seamless light and shadow technology, AI intelligent perception, green energy-saving products, customized services and cultural tourism scenario integration become five core keywords of the industry.
In the future, only enterprises that follow technological trends, strictly control quality, focus on customer demands and refuse low-price involution can seize dividends from urban renewal and night economy, stand out in fierce competition, and light up a new blueprint of urban night economy with professional light and shadow solutions.
