Products of the Year 2026: Beckhoff awarded 1st place twice over

The Products of the Year awards provide a reliable indicator of which new products are set to achieve market success. This year, 96 products from over 600 submissions made it to the finals in twelve categories. Experts and users working in these areas then rated the products according to their relevance and innovation level. The fact that Beckhoff solutions won in no fewer than two categories illustrates just how closely the company’s development roadmap is aligned with the actual needs of machine and system engineering.

Pioneering PLC architecture

TwinCAT PLC++ took first place in the Control & Regulation category. This new PLC generation offers significant improvements in engineering and runtime performance, alongside seamless integration into the TwinCAT automation platform. “With its strict focus on DevOps principles such as continuous integration and continuous deployment, Beckhoff is consistently pursuing its objective of merging automation and IT,” explains Béla Höfig, TwinCAT Product Manager. “The result is a forward-looking architecture that makes it easy to switch over while fully retaining the previous TwinCAT functionality.”

Powerful industrial PC

Meanwhile, in the Embedded Computing & IPC category, it was the C6670-0020 industrial server that came out on top. The high-performance industrial PC provides sufficient computing power for even the most demanding XPlanar or AI applications. Equipped with two scalable 5th generation Intel^® Xeon^® processors and up to 1,024 gigabytes of DDR5 RAM, the system is redefining performance limits in the control cabinet. “It gives users the opportunity to participate directly in the rapid development happening on the PC market,” states Roland van Mark, senior product manager for industrial PCs. “At the same time, they benefit from a solution with long-term availability – and no compromising on industrial requirements.”

The results of this year’s readers’ poll are indicative of the technological upheaval taking place in the manufacturing industry. Advanced automation technology is extending far beyond classic control and regulation methods because smart, data-driven processes require intelligent networking of complex systems at OT and IT level. “Thanks to the combination of powerful hardware such as the C6670-0020 and state-of-the-art PLC development with Beckhoff TwinCAT PLC++, Beckhoff supplies modules that meet these needs exactly,” says Christopher Kleinert, part of the Beckhoff sales team, summing things up after the award ceremony.