RFID priorities for retailers: 2026 summit insights, revealed

Simply getting RFID into your stores is a significant achievement.

But, for retailers at our annual RFID Innovation Summit in Madrid, that launch is only the first step on a long journey to success.

They told us they want more products to arrive tagged, more colleagues to use the information and more of the business to benefit from the investment.

Our annual in-person gathering brings the business leaders of the RFID programmes and key stakeholders, such as loss prevention, together to share what’s working and where they are struggling.

More than 20 leading retailers joined the Summit and told us about their achievements and ambitions for the year ahead.

These ranged from securing investment to completing rollouts, and from completing a first store trial to new uses across an established business.

Looking back at what participants shared at our 2025 meeting helps put those ambitions in context.

These comparisons bring together separate participants’ accounts, and it’s worth noting that several concerns recur.

The RFID priorities for retailers include both extending deployment and making better use of what is already in place.

Getting started, then keeping it working

For businesses still preparing to launch, progress can mean:

• getting a business case approved;
• choosing a provider;
• or assembling the team that will deliver the programme.

Retailers recognised these steps among their achievements this year.

One participant was looking forward to scanning products in their first store, while others had reached the point where RFID was part of normal operations.

Last year, participants had already described completed store rollouts, warehouse scanning and self-checkout using RFID.

This year’s accounts included maintaining stock accuracy, helping stores embed their processes and assessing how well the technology was performing.

Going live gives a business something to build on, with further work to keep it useful and reliable.

This year, participants also described wider supplier labelling rollouts and ambitions to bring more brands and merchandise into their programmes.

Source tagging can therefore be an achievement worth recognising while remaining a priority for the year ahead.

Our research into the impact of RFID in retailing identified tagging at manufacture as central to its case-study companies’ long-term approach.

The retailers’ accounts show the work involved in putting that approach into practice.

Making the information useful

Once products can be read, retailers have more information about their stock. What they do with it becomes another part of the story.

For a business already collecting RFID data, the opportunity may lie in what another team can do with it.

Participants described how RFID data helps field teams:

• assess performance;
• check whether products are displayed as intended;
• and locate stock within stores.

Their ambitions included supporting replenishment and improving loss prevention reporting.

The revenue ambition goes further, towards finding opportunities in the information already captured.

These reported uses are useful examples of how an investment in stock visibility can serve more than one purpose.

Our research on RFID innovation found that additional uses often developed incrementally as businesses became more established in using the technology.

The summit accounts give that practical meaning: information collected for one purpose may become useful to another team or help answer another business question.

There is room for setbacks along the way.

Last year, one participant wanted “A better RFID POS integration”.

This year, another reported a point-of-sale failure and lessons learned.

Both these accounts show that making RFID work at checkout deserves attention beyond the initial deployment.

Bringing the wider business with it

Finding another use for the data also raises the question of who will use it.

For a business with an established RFID programme, wider involvement may be as significant a next step as another deployment.

If its information is to support replenishment, reporting or loss prevention, the teams responsible for those activities have a role in shaping how it is used.

Retailers also recognised colleague engagement, senior management support and building internal expertise among this year’s achievements.

Their ambitions included expanding an internal RFID community and agreeing a roadmap for what comes next.

They were counting the people and support behind their programmes alongside the technical milestones.

Our 2026 survey on organisational capability explored similar questions about ownership and RFID’s place within the business.

At the summit, those questions sat alongside plans for:

• always-on reading;
• anti-counterfeit trials:
• an AI software layer;
• replacing current readers and updating software.

The next year’s work therefore includes both new applications and improvements to existing programmes.

For a business approaching its first trial, a successful launch would be worth celebrating.

For one already using RFID across its stores, the next achievement may be getting another team to use the information, tagging another product category or making an everyday task easier.

The rollout gives retailers a starting point for that work; it doesn’t settle what RFID can do for the business.

Our 2026 RFID Innovation Summit was held in Madrid and ran alongside the RAIN Alliance.annual meeting.

Thanks to all those who took part, including: Arc’teryx, Christian Zen, Conforama, C&A, Decathlon, Desigual, Dunelm, Foot Locker, H&M, IKEA, JD Sports, Levi’s, Marks & Spencer, New Yorker, Primark, VF, Sainsbury’s, TJX Europe, Tendam, The Sting and Tesco.