Meta Connect 2026 is set for September 23 and 24 at Meta's Menlo Park campus. Meta Connect is the company's annual hardware event — think Macworld keynote, but for glasses, headsets, and AI devices. Mark Zuckerberg announced the date on Instagram.
One slide showed Zuckerberg holding what are clearly glasses, colored over with blue pen to hide identifying details, with several more devices visible on a table in front of him. Another slide listed "AI updates," "demos," "special guests," and "better wifi" alongside a sunglasses emoji. A third slide contained a single blurred word widely read as "performance."
Leaked images from XR Research Institute show two Ray-Ban Gen 3 models reportedly coming: "Aperol," a sunglasses-style design with thicker frames for larger batteries, and "Bellini," a lighter optical frame built for prescription wearers. Both reportedly run on a Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1+ chip, an upgrade from the current AR1 Gen 1. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has noted Meta considers the current glasses' camera quality similar to an iPhone 11 from 2019, with Gen 3 targeting iPhone 13-level quality.
The current Ray-Ban Meta supports Live AI — the feature that lets you look at the world and ask questions in real time — for only about 30 minutes before the battery takes a serious hit, and the Gen 3 models reportedly extend that to hours.
In April Meta launched Ray-Ban Meta Blayzer and Scriber Optics, two new prescription-optimized frame styles starting at $499, supporting nearly all prescriptions. A Neural Handwriting feature for the Ray-Ban Display model lets you write replies on any surface with your finger, sent across WhatsApp, Instagram, and iMessage.
The blurred "performance" word has fueled speculation about Malibu 2, Meta's first smartwatch, which The Information reported is in development with health tracking and a built-in Meta AI assistant, citing two people familiar with the matter. Meta declined to comment. The watch reportedly incorporates EMG technology — muscle signal sensors, the same type used in the Neural Band that controls the Ray-Ban Display glasses — which would let it serve as a gesture controller for the glasses rather than just a standalone health tracker. Meta shelved its first smartwatch attempt in 2022 after plans ballooned to include three cameras. Malibu 2 has narrowed that scope to health tracking and AI.
Meta's own Connect announcement described the event as a chance to "get the first glimpse of what's coming to the next computing platform," with the keynote covering VR, wearables, metaverse, and AI.
Meta held 76.1% of the smart glasses market in 2025 with over 7 million units sold. A smartwatch paired to the glasses would put Meta on a collision course with both Apple Watch and whatever Apple has planned for glasses.
If new Ray-Bans are on your list, September 23 is worth waiting for.