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GreenTech 2026 brought together visitors, exhibitors and partners from across the international horticultural technology sector.
GreenTech Amsterdam 2026 highlighted a shift in horticultural technology from isolated product launches to system-wide innovation for smarter, more resilient greenhouse production. Over three days, topics such as robotics, AI, cybersecurity, water reuse, CO₂ management, dynamic lighting, and global knowledge transfer illustrated the industry’s determination to tackle major challenges.
The PURE connection theme defined the event, reflected in the constant exchange among exhibitors, growers, researchers and technology providers, both during and outside formal sessions. For FCI, that connection mattered most when it moved beyond networking and into practical problem-solving: how can horticultural technology help growers respond to labour shortages, resource pressure, climate uncertainty and rising expectations around sustainability?
Across the show floor, robots drew attention not simply because they moved, lifted or transplanted, but because they spoke directly to one of the sector’s biggest pressures: labour. The strongest conversations were not about technology for its own sake, but about whether automation could make daily greenhouse work simpler, safer and more commercially realistic.
Visitors queue outside RAI Amsterdam for GreenTech 2026, where the theme of PURE connection brought the horticultural technology sector together.
In a post-show reflection shared on LinkedIn, GreenTech Director Mariska Dreschler pointed to the energy created over three days, with 530 exhibitors, visitors from around the world, and conversations focused on innovation, global challenges and new solutions. Her message reflected what was visible across the show floor: GreenTech was not only a display of technology but also a meeting point for people seeking to understand how horticulture can produce more efficiently, sustainably, and confidently in uncertain conditions.
For professional horticultural producers, the strongest message was clear: the greenhouse of the future must be smarter, more resource-secure, better connected, and easier for growers to trust in practice. GreenTech 2026 did not simply showcase more technology. It showed how the sector is moving towards production systems that can respond to labour shortages, rising energy costs, water pressure, climate volatility and increasing expectations around sustainability.
A key question dominated the event: how to simplify growing, not make it more complex. While AI, robotics, and data platforms filled the show, the most valued discussions centred on tools that help growers act sooner, cut waste, safeguard crops, and manage risks, without overloading professional growers with information. Innovations were strongest when they turned complexity into workable clarity.
4XRobots won the GreenTech Robot Challenge for its 4X Delta Cobot, designed for high-speed plant transplanting and collaborative automation in greenhouse production.
The practical automation message was also clear at the 4XRobots stand. GreenTech’s Robot Challenge winner, 4XRobots, was recognised for its 4X Delta Cobot for high-speed plant transplanting. In conversation at the stand, Nick Chambers, Head of Global Market Development, explained the company’s focus on simple automation for real greenhouse production, particularly where growers need to reduce repetitive manual handling without removing people from the process altogether.
He described the robot as a collaborative automation system for tasks including transplanting, plug extraction and packing or tray loading. Its selling point is not only speed, but also its design to work safely around people and fit into existing production environments. For SMEs and growers with limited labour, this kind of automation may be especially relevant: not as a futuristic replacement for the workforce, but as a practical tool to take pressure off teams and make repetitive work more consistent.
The GreenTech Innovation Awards 2026 celebrated technologies addressing automation, plant sensing, crop protection and more sustainable greenhouse production.
The GreenTech Innovation Awards highlighted industry advancements by recognising excellence across various innovation categories. Sensie received the Innovation Award for Sensie Omni, a wireless plant wearable that translates real-time root, climate and plant signals into proactive growing strategies. MANNA CEA from the Republic of Korea earned the Concept Award for MESH, a modular AI greenhouse automation and management system. PATS was honoured with the newly launched Impact Award for PATS-C, an automated monitoring system for moth pests that predicts the life-cycle of caterpillars and supports better-timed biocontrol interventions.
Sensie won the GreenTech Innovation Awards 2026 Innovation Award for Sensie Omni, a plant wearable that helps growers understand how crops respond to root-zone and climate conditions.
At the Sensie stand, co-founder and CEO Olivier Begerem was presenting a product built around a deceptively simple grower question: climate and root-zone data may show what is happening around the crop, but what is the plant itself telling you? Sensie’s plant wearable is designed to add that missing layer by helping growers understand whether the crop is in balance, under pressure or recovering.
That idea fitted closely with one of the strongest themes across GreenTech 2026: the move from measuring greenhouse conditions to understanding plant response. The official jury response reflected the same point. Egon Janssen, Chair of the GreenTech Innovation Awards jury, described one of horticulture’s biggest challenges as putting the plant truly in control. By translating root, climate, and plant signals into practical growing strategies, Sensie Omni points toward a future where crop decisions are not based solely on the environment around the plant, but on how the crop is coping with it.
MANNA CEA from the Republic of Korea won the GreenTech Innovation Awards 2026 Concept Award for MESH, its modular AI greenhouse automation and management system.
The award for MANNA CEA fitted another strong GreenTech theme: how to make smart greenhouse control more accessible. In conversation with FCI, Lim Jungi, CTO at MANNA CEA, explained that many South Korean farms are smaller than the large high-tech greenhouse operations commonly associated with advanced automation. That modular system is intended to simplify installation and control by using a hub, sensor modules, control modules and third-party device connections, with Bluetooth mesh communication reducing wiring complexity. The company’s message was not that growers need more data for its own sake, but that AI and automation should help growers understand what to do next.
PATS won the newly launched GreenTech Innovation Awards 2026 Impact Award for PATS-C, an automated moth pest-monitoring system designed to support earlier crop protection decisions.
PATS-C added a practical crop-protection layer to the awards story. At the PATS stand, CEO and co-founder Bram Tijmons was busy with many visitors, while a team member explained how the technology had developed from an original idea to avoid mosquito bites into a greenhouse pest-monitoring system with a much broader horticultural purpose. The PATS-C system is a way to support scouting through camera-based pest monitoring, automated identification and real-time insights. The practical benefit for growers is not only earlier warning but also less reliance on physical scouting rounds and greater confidence in when to intervene.
Biological control also featured in one of the most memorable sustainability stories of the event. Little Spider BV, winner of a GreenTech Sustainability Award, presented a spider-based pest control approach that asks growers to think longer term. At the Little Spider stand, Technical Specialist Chris Krijger explained how the company introduces spider eggs into greenhouses, where the spiders gradually establish a resident predator population. The process can take six to twelve months, but the aim is to reduce dependence on chemical insecticides and repeated biological control introductions over time.
The appeal of the Little Spider story is partly that it runs counter to the instant-results culture that can surround new technology. It is not a quick-fix product, and that is precisely what makes it interesting. Sustainable pest control may require growers to build trust in a living system, not simply apply another input. The company’s experience also shows how important expectation-setting becomes when the result depends on population build-up, crop conditions and patience.
Throughout the GreenTech presentation programme, the focus on data and AI was on making information practical. Sessions on data-driven horticulture, smart scheduling, dashboard fatigue, autonomous steering, and cybersecurity highlighted one key issue: growers need systems that turn increasing amounts of data into actionable insights, not more clutter.
That message was particularly clear in discussions around plant feedback and lighting control. Daniel Bänkestad, R&D Manager at Heliospectra, introduced Heliosense, a fluorescence sensor designed to measure photosynthetic response from above the crop canopy without disrupting commercial greenhouse operations. The wider GreenTech session on “Plant feedback for lighting control” also brought in Kees Weerheim, Senior Plant Physiologist at Ledgnd B.V., and Silvère Vialet-Chabrand, Assistant Professor in Horticulture and Product Physiology at Wageningen University & Research. Together, the discussion pointed towards a shift from controlling the climate around the crop to using plant feedback to guide lighting, screening and climate decisions. The grower-facing lesson was simple but important: more light is not always better.
Water was another defining theme. In “Every Drop Counts – Water as a Controllable Asset”, Simon Jones, Global Sales Director at Genap BV, and John van der Wilk, Global Sales Director at GreenV, framed water as a resource to be captured, protected, treated and reused. For professional growers, this is both a regulatory and a production issue, with discharge, nutrient runoff, recirculation requirements, and water scarcity all shaping greenhouse design and management. The business case is no longer only about saving water but also about protecting shared water resources, reducing compliance risk, safeguarding crop health, retaining nutrients, and building resilience as water availability becomes less predictable.
The CO₂ question was equally strategic. In “Environmental Impact: Opportunities Through Life Cycle Assessment”, Ot Messemaker, Head of Business Finance at Skytree, and Alexander van Tuyll, Researcher in Circular Greenhouse Horticulture at Wageningen University & Research, discussed how greenhouse horticulture can secure the carbon dioxide it needs while reducing dependence on fossil-based or increasingly constrained industrial sources. Skytree presented direct air capture as one possible route to independent CO₂ supply, drawing on technology originally developed for carbon dioxide removal on the International Space Station before being adapted for greenhouse use. Wageningen University & Research broadened the discussion through lifecycle assessment, emphasising that sustainability cannot be reduced to carbon alone. Fertilisers, crop protection, phosphorus, growing media, water and material flows all shape the environmental impact of protected cultivation.
Energy resilience was also central. In “How to Utilise Waste Heat for Greenhouse Production”, Serge de Reuver, Head of Sales at KUBO Group, and Pieter Kruijt, Director Horti Division at Verkade Climate, presented waste heat as a route towards lower-carbon greenhouse production. Their message was that greenhouse projects may increasingly need to be designed around available heat flows, not only around land and market access. Data centres offered one of the most striking examples: a modern solution to the waste energy created by modern technology, linking the growth of digital infrastructure with the heat needs of controlled greenhouse production. This takes greenhouse innovation into a wider infrastructure conversation involving growers, investors, industrial partners, technology suppliers and governments.
Silke Hemming of Wageningen University & Research presents HortINSpire Europe, a knowledge-sharing initiative focused on connecting greenhouse horticulture expertise across regions.
The need for shared knowledge also came through in the launch of HortINSpire, a new Wageningen University & Research initiative designed to connect growers, industry partners, knowledge institutes, policymakers, investors, and other stakeholders in controlled-environment horticulture. The session focused on global insights with local impact. Its regional WUR contributors included Yu Tong Qiu for China, Joseph Peller for Japan, Dan Rustia for Korea and Taiwan, Silke Hemming for Europe, and Laura Bautista for North America. Together, they underlined that protected cultivation is developing under very different climate, labour, policy, investment and knowledge conditions around the world. HortINSpire’s value lies in creating a platform for that exchange: not exporting one greenhouse model everywhere, but helping global expertise adapt to local realities.
For FCI, GreenTech 2026 showed a sector moving from technology adoption to system resilience. The innovations that stood out were not only those that automated a task or generated a new stream of data. They were the ones that helped answer practical grower questions: how to use less water, how to secure CO₂, how to control pests earlier, how to use light more efficiently, how to reduce labour pressure, how to trust data, and how to make sustainability measurable.
That is where the event’s PURE connection theme carried real meaning. The future greenhouse will not be defined by technology in isolation, but by the connections between plant response, grower expertise, resource use, data, labour and environmental responsibility. GreenTech 2026 showed that this future is already taking shape: smarter, more integrated and more closely aligned with the realities growers face.
