Natural Products Expo West 2026 Recap: Protein, Regenerative Ag, and 45 Years of Natural CPG

Natural Products Expo West 2026 ran March 3–6 at the Anaheim Convention Center — the 45th edition of the industry's flagship trade show, drawing more than 66,000 registered attendees and 3,200+ brands across food, beverage, supplements, and lifestyle.

Forty-five years is a long run for any trade show. Natural Products Expo West has made it through category cycles, regulatory battles, pandemic pivots, and the full arc of the organic movement — from fringe health food co-op product to $342 billion global industry. The 2026 edition landed with energy that reflected all of that accumulated momentum.

The show floor at the Anaheim Convention Center was a read on where the natural CPG industry is heading: protein — particularly animal protein — back at the center of the conversation; regenerative agriculture claiming its place alongside organic certification; women's health finally getting the shelf space it's earned; and GLP-1 weight-loss medications reshaping the supplement category from the outside in. And for the first time, the show opened a day early with a dedicated CPG Innovation Summit for emerging brands.

Here's the full breakdown of Natural Products Expo West 2026.

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Expo West 2026 at a Glance

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What were the key highlights of Natural Products Expo West 2026?

The standout highlights from Expo West 2026 were the 45th-anniversary milestone, the debut of the CPG Innovation Summit as a pre-show day, a dominant protein trend (led by animal protein's comeback over plant-based), a significant surge in women's health products and GLP-1-adjacent nutrition products, the NEXTY Award winners across 37 categories, and a regenerative agriculture momentum that's beginning to rival organic as the industry's next major certification standard.

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A 45th-anniversary show with a new opening day

New Hope Network has produced Expo West since 1981. The 2026 edition marked the 45th anniversary — a milestone the show used to introduce structural changes, not just commemorative branding.

The most significant addition was the inaugural CPG Innovation Summit, held on March 3, the Tuesday before the main show floors opened. The Summit was designed to bring together early-stage and growth-stage brands, investors, and service providers for a day of deep-dives into AI-enabled marketing, evolving retail models, and impact-driven business strategy before the noise of the full show floor descended.

The centerpiece of the Summit was the Pitch Slam, where mission-driven brands made fast-paced pitches to a panel of investors and industry leaders. The inaugural competition produced a clear emerging-brand winner: Ulu Foods, a Barbados-based breadfruit cracker brand, took the Pitch Slam grand prize, with Sweeter Collective also recognized among the prize winners. For emerging brands, the pre-show window meant investor and buyer access without competing with 3,200 other booths for attention. That's a format worth watching: if the Summit matures, it becomes a meaningful first filter for the brands most worth tracking across the full four days.

The show's traditional opener, the Fresh Ideas Marketplace (Wednesday, March 4), remained intact — a curated zone where USDA Organic and Regenerative Organic Certified brands exhibit for a single day, making it the closest Expo West gets to a treasure hunt. This year, 44 of the Fresh Ideas exhibitors participated in a zero-waste sampling program in collaboration with r.World, eliminating 29,600 single-use items, diverting 168 pounds of waste from landfills, and conserving 2,856 gallons of water. It's a small footprint relative to a four-day show, but it's the kind of demonstrable, quantified sustainability that moves the conversation.

Another 2026 addition worth noting was the first-time Snack Lab, a dedicated space for better-for-you snacking concepts. It reinforced one of the show's clearest signals: indulgence is not disappearing from natural CPG, but brands are being pushed to pair flavor with cleaner ingredient decks, protein, fiber, or functional positioning.

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Keynotes: the state of the industry, Gary Vaynerchuk, and food policy

The keynote lineup across Expo West's three main days covered the full range of what the industry actually cares about: market structure, consumer attention, and regulatory context.

Wednesday, March 4 — The State of Natural & Organic

The opening day keynote was a panel titled "The State of Natural & Organic" — a format well-suited to the 45th-anniversary framing. The panel brought together:

• Seth Goldman — co-founder of Just Ice Tea (formerly Honest Tea), one of the natural beverage category's most experienced operators
• Gary Hirshberg — CEO, co-founder, and chief organic optimist at Stonyfield Farm, a foundational figure in the organic movement
• Kathryn Peters — Head of Industry Relations at SPINS, the industry's primary data and analytics provider
• Pat Sheridan — President and CEO of INFRA (Independent Natural Food Retailers Association)
• Bill Giebler — Content and Insights Director at Nutrition Business Journal
• Adrienne Smith and Jenna Fitch of New Hope Network

The panel composition reflected the full value chain: founders, retailers, distributors, and analysts on the same stage. For anyone trying to calibrate where the category is heading, the next keynote shifted the lens from market structure to consumer attention.

Thursday, March 5 — Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk addressed the assembled natural products industry on shifts in consumer attention and how brands can stay relevant in a fragmented media landscape. Vaynerchuk's presence at Expo West is a signal: the natural CPG world is taking social commerce and creator-driven marketing seriously in a way it wasn't three years ago. The era of relying on natural food retailer placement as the discovery mechanism is over; brands are learning that discovery now happens on TikTok and Instagram before it happens on a shelf.

Friday, March 6 — Jessica Knurick, PhD

Jessica Knurick, PhD — a nutrition scientist and scientific communicator — delivered the closing keynote with a message that cut against the grain of typical trade show programming: lead without fear-based marketing, and engage with food policy and public health evidence on its own terms. In a category where a significant share of marketing relies on what's absent (no additives, no GMOs, no PFAS), that's a harder argument to make than it sounds. Knurick's push toward positive, evidence-based framing may not reshape the industry in one keynote, but it identified a real tension.

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The trends that defined Expo West 2026

1. Protein is everywhere — and animal protein is back

The single most visible trend on the Expo West 2026 show floor was protein — specifically the rehabilitation of animal-sourced protein after years of plant-based dominance in the trade media narrative.

Jerky and meat sticks experienced a genuine renaissance, expanding well beyond traditional beef into game meats: turkey, bison, venison, and wild-caught fish. Kettle & Fire's Maui Nui Venison Bone Broth (NEXTY winner, Product Design & Storytelling) was a standout example — provenance-forward, sustainable, and functional. Beef tallow also had a significant presence, reintroduced as both a cooking fat and an ingredient trend on the clean-label and whole-animal-utilization wave.

Plant-based proteins weren't disappearing from the show floor. But the narrative shifted: after years of exponential growth claims, the category is now being evaluated on taste, texture, and real consumer retention — and the brands drawing attention were those that had actually improved on those dimensions, not those still trading on category tailwinds.

For buyers: The protein story at Expo West 2026 is more nuanced than "animal is back, plant-based is out." The real trend is premiumization and sourcing transparency across protein types. Regenerative-sourced beef, pasture-raised eggs, and improved-texture plant proteins are competing on the same shelf — winning on quality claims, not category claims.

2. Regenerative agriculture moves from buzzword to certification

Organic certification has been the natural products industry's standard-bearer for decades. In 2026, regenerative agriculture is making a credible run at becoming the next major certification standard consumers and retailers recognize.

At Expo West 2026, regenerative branding and Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) labeling was visible across the Fresh Ideas Marketplace and on the main show floor. Several NEXTY Award categories explicitly rewarded regenerative sourcing — StarWalker Organic Farms' Organic Ground Beef (Meat or Animal-Based winner) and Ladybug Brands' Organic Lemons in Zero-Plastic Net (Packaged Product winner) both carried organic and regenerative positioning.

The question is whether regenerative becomes a consumer-facing signal the way organic did, or whether it stays an industry-insider distinction. Expo West 2026 suggested it's in the transition zone: understood by serious buyers and specialty retailers, and beginning to appear in consumer-facing packaging. The brands leading on regenerative credentials now are positioning for a labeling and marketing advantage in a two-to-three-year window before it becomes table stakes.

3. Women's health claims its shelf space

Women's health had what multiple observers described as a breakout moment at Expo West 2026. Hormone health, perimenopause and menopause support, women's sexual and reproductive health, and fertility nutrition all drove a visible expansion of the category on the show floor and in the education programming.

This is both a demographic and a market timing story. Perimenopause and menopause affect over 1.3 million women in the US every year, and the category has been dramatically undersupplied relative to demand. Expo West 2026 was the moment the natural products industry started catching up — with branded formulations, clinical positioning, and shelf strategies that didn't exist in the mainstream natural retail channel two years ago.

4. GLP-1 support reshapes the supplement category

GLP-1 weight loss medications (semaglutide and similar) are having the same effect on the supplement industry that intermittent fasting had five years ago: they're creating an entirely new consumer segment with specific nutritional needs, and the brands that understand those needs first are winning shelf space.

At Expo West 2026, GLP-1-adjacent nutrition was a high-energy segment — products marketed for consumers using GLP-1 medications, built around companion nutrition: protein adequacy, micronutrient density, fiber, hydration, and digestive comfort. The consumer profile is real: people on GLP-1 medications are eating significantly less, but their micronutrient needs don't decrease proportionally. The brands drawing serious buyer conversations were those that understood the nutritional picture and built formulations around it, not those slapping a trend label on an existing SKU.

5. Magnesium is the sleeper supplement trend

Underneath the louder headlines, magnesium was having a strong show. Stress, sleep quality, and muscle recovery are the on-ramp for most consumers — approachable claims that don't require a clinical conversation — and magnesium's benefits across all three have made it one of the most-searched supplement ingredients in the past year. Multiple exhibitors led with magnesium formulations as a category anchor rather than a secondary add-in.

6. Clean labels, nostalgia, and the "recognizable ingredients" positioning

Across food and beverage, the quiet momentum behind clean-label positioning — simple, recognizable ingredients, minimal processing, nothing artificial — continued to build. The 2026 version of this trend has a nostalgic flavor: brands leaning into "the way food used to be made" as a quality signal, often tied to specific sourcing stories or traditional preparation methods.

Leaven Foods' All-Purpose Instant Sourdough (NEXTY winner in Pantry Staples) is a good example: a functional, modern product format positioned on ancient fermentation practice. The tension between novelty and tradition is being resolved by making the traditional approach the innovation.

On the beverage side, the same dynamic was playing out: functional beverages pairing familiar formats (sparkling water, sodas, teas) with cleaner sweetener decks, added fiber, or electrolyte profiles. Nixie Beverage Company's Cream Soda Organic Zero Sugar (An Organic Night Out winner, Best New Organic Beverage) captured the combination well — recognizable flavor, organic ingredients, zero sugar. The bar for beverage innovation at Expo West is no longer novelty; it's execution on a familiar format with a cleaner deck.

7. Fiber finds its moment

Alongside magnesium and protein, dietary fiber was a consistent supporting ingredient across categories — in snacks, beverages, and supplement blends. The GLP-1 and gut health conversations both point in the same direction: fiber as infrastructure, not just a checkbox on a nutrition label.

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NEXTY Award winners 2026

The NEXTY Awards recognize the most innovative products at Expo West. In 2026, nearly 1,000 products entered across 37 categories, with judges selecting one winner per category plus Editors' Choice picks. Two new categories were added — Newtopia Now and Product Design and Storytelling — and the meat and dairy categories were split for the first time.

Selected winners:

The full winner list across all 37 categories is available on the New Hope Network NEXTY Award pages.

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An Organic Night Out 2026 award winners

The Organic Trade Association's annual celebration recognized companies and individuals advancing organic across the supply chain:

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Expo West 2026 vs 2025: what changed

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FAQs: Natural Products Expo West 2026

When was Natural Products Expo West 2026?

Natural Products Expo West 2026 ran March 3–6, 2026, at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. The CPG Innovation Summit opened on March 3, with the Fresh Ideas Marketplace on March 4 and the main show floors open March 4–6.

How many people attended Natural Products Expo West 2026?

More than 66,000 registered attendees from over 110 countries participated in Expo West 2026, with representation across 26 national and regional pavilions.

How many brands exhibited at Expo West 2026?

More than 3,200 brands exhibited at Natural Products Expo West 2026, displaying products across food and beverage, health and beauty, lifestyle, vitamins and supplements, raw ingredients, and solution providers.

What was the biggest trend at Expo West 2026?

Protein dominance was the most visible trend, with animal protein — particularly jerky, meat sticks, game meats, and beef tallow — coming back strongly after years of plant-based dominance in trade coverage. Other major trends included regenerative agriculture certifications, women's health supplements (especially perimenopause/menopause), GLP-1-adjacent nutrition products, and magnesium.

What was new at Expo West 2026?

The inaugural CPG Innovation Summit was the biggest structural addition — a full pre-show day (March 3) for emerging brands, investors, and operators to connect before the main show floors opened. The Summit included the Pitch Slam, where early-stage brands pitched to investors and industry leaders. Two new NEXTY Award categories were also added: Newtopia Now and Product Design and Storytelling.

Who were the keynote speakers at Expo West 2026?

The three main keynotes were: a "State of Natural & Organic" panel (featuring Seth Goldman, Gary Hirshberg, Kathryn Peters, and others, March 4); Gary Vaynerchuk on consumer attention and brand relevance (March 5); and Dr. Jessica Knurick on evidence-based nutrition and food policy leadership (March 6).

What were the NEXTY Award winners at Expo West 2026?

Selected NEXTY winners included Seven Sundays (Plant-Forward), StarWalker Organic Farms (Meat or Animal-Based), NestFresh (Dairy or Egg), Leaven Foods (Pantry Staples), Ladybug Brands (Packaged Product), Milkadamia (Environmentally Sustainable Packaging), and Kettle & Fire (Product Design & Storytelling). The full list spans 37 categories.

Is Natural Products Expo West returning in 2027?

Yes. Natural Products Expo West 2027 is scheduled for March 2–5, 2027 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. Education programming runs March 2–5; exhibit halls are open March 3–5.

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Planning for Expo West 2027?

Expo West 2027 runs March 2–5, 2027 (exhibits March 3–5) at the Anaheim Convention Center.

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