Customers from around the world attended HEIDELBERG Days in the Print Media Centre, Home Of Print in Wiesloch, outside Heidelberg, on April 16, 2026.

HEIDELBERG Days 2026 was held April 15–16, at the Print Media Center, the Home of Print. at Wiesloch-Walldorf, Germany. Existing and potential customers from around the world, accompanied by their respective country reps looked at everything HEIDELBERG has to offer. The first day of the event was aimed at German-speaking countries with around 200 attendees, the second (English) day saw around 130 attendees, the lower number due to travel problems of a strike by Lufthansa airlines.

Dr David Schmedding, Chief Technology and Sales Officer, opened with a keynote, and in a subsequent interview explained HEIDELBERG's strategic changes to address package printing and packaging workflows, while still supporting the core commercial print business.

David Schmedding, Chief Technology and Sales Officer delivered the opening keynote at HEIDELBERG Days, in Heidelberg, April 16, 2026

On the digital side, HEIDELBERG as a system integrator works frequently partners with digital press manufacturers.. On display at the event was the HEIDELBERG digital (toner) cut-sheet press—the Versafire, with different versions including the Versafire LV that use a 5th color station for print embellishment. The Jetfire 50 from HEIDELBERG was the other digital device on show, , which is a industrial inkjet system. Both the Versafire and Jetfire are CMYK-only, and both were driven by the Prinect digital front end (DFE) - which integrates both systems in the overall workflow of a print shop with Prinect..

On the software side there were demonstrations of "Prinect Touch Free", a new cloud-based app that ingests an XML job ticket and pdf content, and then uses AI and the company's costing systems to analyse the job, decide on which digital or offset press should be used and configures the job directly to populate the job in the front end of the appropriate  Jetfire, Versafire or Speedmaster machine or even 3^rd party digital printing devices. The Prinect Touch Free app supports a hybrid printing production of commercial print applications like business cards, flyers, brochures, but does not automate packaging yet. In the long-term, it would seem that more and more of the Prinect functionality will migrate to this cloud platform.

With an eye on expanded color gamut (ECG) printing, on the floor was a Speedmaster XL75 Anicolor. This press – and all other HEIDELBERG offset presses – when used in CMYK-OGV configuration can reproduce a complete spot color book, which was provided to me as the "Prinect Multicolor Guide", with uncanny resemblance to another well-known spot color Guide! Prinect color specialist Cordula Voelker, showed me Delta E numbers that demonstrate the effectiveness (in terms of marketable print quality) of ECG when printing simulated spot colors in packaging.

HEIDELBERG has so much technology that sessions were split into tracks for High Volume and High Value Packaging, Industrial and Commercial Print, Flexible Commercial Print and Digital Solutions.

A tour of the factory was the highlight for many attendees. The factory tour included the clean room for PCBs for the manufacture and assembly of the electronics that go into the presses and consoles - of course this was viewed from the other side of the glass. In the assembly line, where photography was prohibited, a press unit takes 40 days to assemble.

HEIDELBERG the company does a great job at hospitality, and the nearby city of Heidelberg offers fantastic opportunities. A welcome dinner was hosted at the Kulturbrauerei Brauhaus, a traditional brewhouse and beer garden approached from a narrow, cobble-stone alleyway, complete with 2-story copper brew kettles.

HEIDELBERG has channeled their showrooms, demo centres, and training facilities into a single entity called a “Print Media Center -Home of Print". There are  more demo centres in different countries.

Print Media Center (in Wiesloch-Walldorf, Germany), Print Media Center Americas (recently moved to a new location in Atlanta, and Print Media Center Shanghai. The HEIDELBERG Days at these centers are a way for the company to still connect with their customers.

Politics, wars in the middle east and tariffs make large purchases particularly tricky. Attendee Anthony Fernandez, President, captíva Group from Texas told me he has volume for a second die cutter, he has the cash, knows what he wants to buy, but is holding back due to the tariffs and all the uncertainty.

At the Print Media Center, over 2-days, attendees were well-fed and looked after, plentiful and well-informed staff and product managers were on hand, every press format and type was being run - offset, digital, flexo and folding carton - but the world economy is unstable, especially for manufacturers of printing and packaging equipment.