On August 28, 2026, AVN Media Network announced that the 2027 AVN Show will return to Virgin Hotels Las Vegas January 20–23, 2027 — the 29th edition of the longest-running annual adult expo, and a complete takeover of the property. On September 2, AVN followed up by opening submissions for the 2027 fan-voted AVN Awards. The timing lands one week after the Adult Novelty Manufacturers Expo announced the end of its 30-year run, leaving AVN's Adult Novelty Expo as the last major U.S. B2B pleasure-products trade floor standing.

Why It Matters

The 2027 trade-show calendar for this industry has been reshuffled in the space of two weeks, and the shape of it now matters to anyone with a product to sell. ANME's exit removed the dedicated, decades-old novelty-manufacturer show. Sex Expo returns to Los Angeles January 7–10, 2027, but as a *consumer* event. E/X Ibiza runs September 22–25, 2026 as an invitation-only gathering of brands and retail buyers. That leaves ANE in Las Vegas as the main open B2B floor where a mid-size manufacturer can meet distributors without an invitation or a consumer-facing booth budget. That consolidation has consequences. ANME's value proposition was that it was purely a trade event — no fans, no red carpet, no performers, just buyers and product. ANE sits inside a week built around awards shows and fan passes, which is a different environment for a wholesale buyer trying to write orders. Whether pleasure-product manufacturers who never exhibited at AVN migrate there, hold out for a successor event, or shift budget to Ibiza-style invitational formats and direct retailer meetings is the open question for the next two quarters. For brands planning 2027 spend, the practical takeaway is that January in Las Vegas just became a higher-stakes week. Booth commitments, product-launch timing and buyer meetings that were previously spread across two shows now compress into one — and CES, which sits in the same month and has its own sex tech presence, competes for the same travel budget.

The 2027 show bundles five separate events: the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo (Jan. 20–23), the Adult Novelty Expo or ANE (Jan. 20–22, industry-only), the GayVN Awards (Jan. 21), the "O" Awards (Jan. 20), and the 44th annual AVN Awards Show (Jan. 23). AVN says the week will bring together adult performers and content creators alongside more than 500 brands. "We can't wait to welcome our friends and colleagues in the industry and the fans of adult entertainment around the world back to the AVN Show at this amazing property," said AVN Media Network CEO Tony Rios. "This will be our best and biggest AVN Show yet."

ANE is the piece that now carries outsized weight. Described by AVN as a B2B experience open only to qualified industry members, it runs three days of exhibits, interactive workshops and educational sessions for vendors and buyers. With ANME — founded in 1996 by CalExotics' Susan Colvin, Nasstoys' Elliot Schwartz and Doc Johnson's Ron and Chad Braverman, and later joined by Pipedream and Topco — having announced its closure on August 27, ANE inherits the American manufacturer-to-distributor meeting function by default rather than by competition.

The venue itself is part of the pitch: Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, part of Curio Collection by Hilton, offers over 1,500 rooms, a dozen restaurants and bars, a casino, spa and a five-acre pool complex. It's a smaller, more contained property than the Hard Rock and Sands-era venues AVN has used historically — which suits a takeover model where the show is the hotel.

Sources

Update — 2026-09-02

Initial entry — story first created.