North American Robot Orders Up 24.8% in Q3 2026

In the third quarter of 2026, North American companies ordered 10,989 robots, up 24.8% from the third quarter of 2025. The figures come from the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), released during the week of October 26-30, 2026, and reported by Manufacturing Dive on October 30. According to A3, this is the highest level of orders in 2026 to date.

Key figures

What emerges from A3's announcement:

• Units ordered: 10,989 robots, up 24.8% year over year.
• Order value: $723.5 million, up 26.1% year over year.
• Collaborative robots (cobots): orders grew 56% year over year, accounting for 16.7% of units ordered.
• Industries: "substantial" increases among semiconductor, biopharmaceutical and metals manufacturers.
• Automotive: a return to growth after declines in the first half of 2026; the size of the Q3 rebound is not given in the text we reviewed.

Growth that is broad, not just large

Alex Shikany, executive vice president of A3, noted that the remarkable point is not only the size of the growth, but "how broadly it was spread across the market." The text we read breaks off after this quote, so we cannot report the rest of his statement. The article adds that capital is flowing into the US market for automation and plant expansion, and that manufacturing activity continued to improve over the summer despite input costs and trade tensions.

Caveats when reading the data

A few limitations should be kept in mind. Orders are not installations: months can pass between order, delivery and commissioning. The article also does not break down the data by robot type or geography, and covers North America as a whole. A single quarter, however strong, is not yet an established trend.

Why it matters for PLC, HMI and SCADA teams

Every robot ordered eventually becomes a cell or line that must be integrated with the rest of the plant. That means PLC programming, operator interfaces, connections to SCADA and MES, alarm management and production data collection. The growth in cobots, which are typically used in flexible, reconfigurable applications, and the strength of semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, sectors with demanding traceability and validation requirements, point to demand for flexible, well-documented automation.

More robots ordered means more cells to integrate, monitor and validate.

To be clear, what follows is our own inference, not a finding from the article: it is plausible that this scenario will increase demand for integration, monitoring and simulation work.

Practical guidance

For plant engineering and IT managers planning new investments:

• Standardize interfaces: define conventions for tags, machine states and alarms early, so new robotic cells plug into existing PLC, HMI and SCADA systems without ad hoc workarounds.
• Plan monitoring from the design stage: decide which robot and cell data will be needed for OEE, maintenance and quality before commissioning.
• Simulate before installing: verifying flows, bottlenecks and cell sizing in a virtual environment reduces risk, especially for flexible layouts.
• Plan validation and documentation: in regulated sectors such as pharmaceuticals, these activities affect timelines as much as installation does.

A3's next quarterly data will show whether Q3 2026 marks the start of a lasting recovery or an isolated peak. In the meantime, plant operators would do well to treat integration, and not just the purchase of the robot, as the critical part of the project.