Meta is scheduled to hold Meta Connect 2026 on September 23, 24, 2026, at its Menlo Park, California campus, and the company’s first commercial smartwatch is among the products expected to debut there, giving the device a likely public reveal date for a wrist product Meta is positioning as far more than a fitness tracker.
The product is expected to go beyond health monitoring to serve as a gestural control interface for the company’s Ray-Ban AI glasses ecosystem.
A project revived after four years on ice
Meta is preparing to launch its first smartwatch later this year, reviving a hardware project it shelved in 2022 as part of sweeping cost cuts across its Reality Labs hardware division. That first attempt had been ambitious, plans at one stage called for versions equipped with three cameras, before the project was quietly wound down.
The on-again, off-again saga of the Meta smartwatch has taken another turn, with reports indicating that the project is very much alive under a new codename: Project Malibu 2, scheduled for a 2026 release according to The Information. The current roadmap reportedly pivots toward health and AI, positioning the watch as a peripheral for Meta’s broader augmented reality and smart glasses ambitions.
The watch is anticipated to offer health tracking features and an integrated Meta AI assistant, The Information reported.
AI glasses momentum drives the wrist play
Meta is entering the smartwatch category from a position of hardware credibility it did not have during its earlier attempt. Its Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, developed in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, have become a rare commercial success story in consumer hardware.
Counterpoint Research data shows the global smart glasses market grew by 110% year over year in H1 2025, fueled by robust demand for Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, with Meta’s share of the global smart glasses market rising to 73%. AI smart glasses accounted for 78% of total shipments in H1 2025.
The glasses demonstrated that consumers are willing to wear AI on their bodies, provided the form factor is familiar enough. A smartwatch, the most established wearable category, represents a lower-risk extension of that strategy.
The smartwatch is designed to deepen that glasses relationship. This is not primarily about challenging the Apple Watch’s dominance in the smartwatch market.
Instead, Meta’s wrist-based strategy appears designed to serve as a sophisticated companion for its expanding smart glasses ecosystem.
A reshaped hardware roadmap
The Malibu 2 is expected to arrive just ahead of updated Ray-Ban Display glasses, positioning the two devices as complementary rather than competing products. Its mixed-reality glasses project, codenamed Phoenix, has been delayed to 2027. Meta is currently reevaluating its launch schedules to prevent the release of too many devices in a short period, which could potentially confuse consumers.
The AI glasses shipment surge that preceded this announcement is part of a broader industry pattern. According to Omdia, AI glasses shipments soared 322 percent in 2025 to 8.7 million units as advances in multimodal AI and lighter wearable designs pushed the once-experimental category toward mainstream adoption.
Meta’s planned smartwatch would let it own more of the daily hardware stack a user touches, from wrist to face, before competitors can do the same.
The competitive stakes are significant. Meta will compete with established players including Apple, Samsung, and Google in the crowded wearables market.
Apple’s own wearable ecosystem is also evolving rapidly. The iOS 26 update that shipped recently brought sensor-driven interface features across more than 1.5 billion iPhones, tightening the software grip that Apple Watch relies on for its value. Meta, notably, lacks a smartphone of its own , meaning its watch must earn its place through the strength of its AI layer and its glasses pairing alone.
What the September date means
Meta Connect 2026 is confirmed for September 23, 24 at the company’s campus in Menlo Park, California, with an evening keynote and developer sessions covering VR, wearables, metaverse, and AI. September 23 is the expected moment when pricing, final specifications, and availability details for any announced products would be disclosed publicly.
Meta has also been dealing with supply constraints: in January, it stated it was delaying the international launch of its latest AI-powered Ray-Ban smart glasses as U.S. demand outpaced supply, forcing the company to focus on fulfilling domestic orders before expanding abroad. A smartwatch launch would signal Meta’s commitment to building a multi-device wearable ecosystem where each piece plays a specific role in the company’s AR strategy.
For developers and enterprise buyers, the gesture-control angle may be the most consequential detail. The Ray-Ban Display was paired with a wrist-worn Neural Band for gesture control at CES 2026, with features such as a teleprompter mode and gesture-based writing. Meta’s decision to potentially bake that function into a consumer smartwatch, rather than keep it in a dedicated research product, suggests the company believes the interaction model is mature enough for mass-market release.
