New This Year: New Guitar Gear for 2026

It has been quite a year for new instruments and gear, hasn’t it? Guitars, basses and digital modellers have all shown up in droves, from big-hitters and smaller brands alike. Personally, I’m here for it all, and I have a feeling you are too!

If you haven’t managed to keep up with all of the year’s releases as they’ve arrived, then this article is for you! I’ve scurried back through the year as it has been from January right up until now - mid August - and gathered together what I see as the highlights of 2026 so far. I’ve no particular angle or agenda here, apart from giving you a one-stop look at some memorable releases from the first half of this year.

Right, let’s see what newness has been unleashed in 2026…

The reign of the ‘Vintage-Era’ continues with a third iteration of this popular Ensenada-built range. Featuring all the Fender greats in several time-honoured specs, the Vintera III slightly changes the dates, adds some quite gorgeous finishes (check out the Seafoam Green Early 60s Strat) and basically reaffirms itself as the entry point to players who want a quality, vintage-facing Fender guitar.

It’s all lacquered necks and underwound single coils pickups in this range, and for me, they provide a joyful antidote to guitar ranges that try to please everybody. I didn’t know that I loved a v-profile neck with a 7.25” radius fingerboard until I spent some time with a Fender Vintera!

These little amp gadgets from JBL - there are two sizes - have possibly provided us here in the gg office with more fun distraction than any other device this year! Why? Because you send it songs from your phone over bluetooth, and then select with elements of that song you want to hear and don’t want to hear. Remove the lead guitar from your favourite songs and jam along with an appropriate tone from the amp, an addictive and very fun activity! We jameed along with John Bonham, Alex Van Halen and even some dodgy Europop tunes, and it was a blast!

It’s also a great sounding, handy little practice amp and speaker for playing music through. The bigger model - the JBL Bandbox Trio - has functions for mics too, so you can lose Robert Plant and David Lee Roth from the mix too!

They were a long time coming, weren’t they? As a long-time Line 6 user, I was more than intrigued to see how they’d improve on the excellent Helix lineup. What they did with the Helix Stadium XL was more like rethinking the entire potential of the device, bringing some amazing functions to it that includes controlling lights, automating effects changes and a whole host of other gig-friendly ideas. On top of that, the newly redesigned processor and inner architecture means that these are the best sounding, most realistic Helix units yet.

Taylor never stop innovating. It’s one thing to refresh a well-loved range of guitars, but quite another to pretty much redesign the construction, pickups and looks of some of their most significant brands. This is Taylor though, and their hunger to constantly improve is what has made them one of the best pro acoustic brands in the world.

For the full lowdown on these, please read through my Taylor Next Gen article, but briefly, these have a new ‘Action Control’ neck joint that makes them absurdly easy to adjust and maintain. The Claria pickup system is completely new and is designed to be as ‘plug and play’ as possible, and there is new scalloped V-class bracing too.

In other words, a pretty thorough rethink, and an exciting proposition for performing musicians!

Here’s another desktop guitar gadget that had us smiling in the office when we tested it out earlier in the year. The Lava Music Studio a digital modelling amp with a large touchscreen on top that flips up or collapses flat. There are licensed models from brands like Matchless and Bogner on it, with effects and cabs all selectable via the touchscreen. Beyond that, you can record your playing over backing tracks, of which there are hundreds built in and more available to download. Like the JBL Bandbox, you can split songs into stems and remove elements (such as lead guitar) and then jam along. Unlike the Bandbox, this unit allows you to do multitrack recording too, and mix your tracks together, making this little metal box one big heap of fun.

Cort are well-known for being the people who actually build guitars and basses for a great many of the world’s guitar brands. These days, whilst continuing to do that, they also push their own branded stuff more, and these recent headless instruments are very tidy indeed!

Check out my video below on the guitar models, the Cort Space G6. They come either as tremolo models or hardtail multiscale guitars, and are as ‘now’ as guitar design can be. They feel lovely, they are solidly built, and there’s a good sense of openness about them stylistically: these have no cultural baggage associated with them, so they feel very spontaneous and free to play.

An AI amp? That accepts visual prompts from a phone app and interprets them as new guitar tones and effects? I’ll admit to feeling some healthy scepticism on the Positive Grid Reactor, but as we photographed nonsense in the office (a Pot Noodle, a banana etc) and got the amp to create tones based on said pics, what we realised soon enough is that the actual amp sounds are high quality and satisfying. The Reactor is certainly loud enough for gigs, and is solidly built, too. I’d wager that the AI features quickly become less important to this amp than its cracking tones. Versatile and straightforward, and also cutting edge future tech. It can be both!

When it comes to digital drums, there is really only one brand in contention for the crown. Roland are the pioneers, and they continue to push boundaries with technology. The current line of V-drum kits blur the differences between analogue and digital like never before, with ever-improving mesh heads that offer greater sensitivity (and more realistic bounce), cymbals that react better to choking and dozens of other tweaks that matter to players.

I’ve chosen to include the Roland TD516 kit here today, because I believe this model offers a pretty exceptional standard of musicality for the cash. It’s not the top of the range kit, but it’s actually very close in practice, and so if you don’t require the full ‘deep shell’ look on the top kits, then I think you’ll have a really rewarding and progressive experience with this pro-level kit.

If you yearn for a top quality USA-made boutique acoustic, but lack the requisite hard-earned, then Bourgeois may just have the perfect compromise. The Touchstone series are a blend of American and Chinese skills: the wood is collected and sorted in the US, where the tops are ‘tap-tuned’ by Bourgeois for optimum resonance. These parts are shipped to the Eastman factory in China, where the guitars are put together under the strict specifications and guidance of Bourgeois. These guitars are then sent back to America for final inspection and setup.

Sounds like a lot, but what you get is a far more affordable guitar which retains all of the learning and know-how of the brand’s boutique builds. Try one today!

We got some exciting guitars and basses from Fender through recently. The Limited Edition Player Fusion series is half modern and half 80s-coded, which makes for some quite lovely guitars if you ask me!

The Fusion Precision Bass was the one that I got excited about straight away. The finish is called Halo Metallic, but I prefer to use the term ‘gold’, because that’s what it is. It has two humongous humbuckers, a lovely thin neck and an ebony fingerboard that, together with a black painted headstock and aforementioned Halo finish, makes one hell of a statement.

Otherwise, I’m quietly ogling the Player Fusion Telecaster HH that has a Floyd Rose tremolo (more like this please, every guitar brand!) and a supremely tasty Player Fusion Jaguar Baritone, which brought me both instant Twin Peaks and sludge metal when I tried it out recently.

These deserve your attention!

At time of writing, we in the UK are still clinging onto the last rays of an unseasonably warm summer, so there’s a lot of 2026 still to go! We’re getting exciting guitar news every month, and it’ll only intensify by the time Christmas (too early to mention, I know!) comes around, so it’s gearing up (scuse the pun) to be an excellent year for instrument and equipment releases. 

Keep checking the site, because as you will already know, we get the news first and share it first! We want you to know about new gear as soon as possible, because we are just as obsessed as you! In the meantime, enjoy everything that 2026 has brought so far.

Browse ALL of Our New For 2026 Gear