- Panasonic launches new range of 2026 TVs for the UK and Europe
- New OLED and mini-LED TVs, including a ‘Glare Free Ultra’ matte screen
- Panasonic TVs will now be manufactured in collaboration with Skyworth
Panasonic has just introduced its new line of TVs for the UK and Europe, and it comes with an interesting new twist: from now on, Panasonic TVs will be created in a new joint venture with Skyworth, best known for its super budget TVs.
The setup sounds extremely similar to what Sony is exploring with TCL: a new company is formed that brings expertise (and staff) from Panasonic and Skyworth’s respective TV teams. The sets will be manufactured by Skyworth.
But while Sony and TCL are still confirming whether they will continue their partnership, Panasonic and Skyworth already have a range of TVs ready to launch in April 2026. The same partnership will be used for Panasonic’s TV business in the US, but we don’t have confirmation of the models yet. Even better, I was able to see many TVs in person at a launch event.
The team was obviously keen to say that the plan is to keep Panasonic’s high-end TVs at the “reference” quality that Panasonic has always strived for (I quote their presentation directly on the use of “reference”), but add more scale and be truly competitive in the increasingly crunchy world of top TVs, where Hisense and TCL have been aggressively redefining what makes a “value” TV.
Interestingly, the new TV range will continue to be led by the same Panasonic Z95B and Z90B OLED TVs that Panasonic currently sells, unchanged.
Just below will be a new, more affordable OLED TV model, called the Panasonic Z86C in the UK. This is the first confirmed set to use LG’s new, cheaper and brighter budget OLED panel, and also supports 4K 120Hz and variable refresh rate for gaming, both Dolby Vision and HDR10+, Dolby Atmos, and will use Amazon’s Fire TV platform for smart TV abilities. (In the rest of Europe, this model will be called Z85C and will use Google TV instead, but is otherwise identical.) It will come in 55 and 65 inch sizes.
There will also be a mini-LED line, and an interesting change here, brought by the partnership with Skyworth, is a ‘Glare Free’ matte coating, much like the one used by Samsung on several of its sets, including the Samsung QN90F mini-LED.
The top of the range in the UK is the Panasonic W94C, available in 55, 65 and 75 inch sizes, with 4K 144Hz and VRR, Dolby Vision HDR and Fire TV support.
Below that in the range is the Panasonic W91C, which supports 4K 60Hz with variable refresh rate, Dolby Vision HDR, Roku as a smart platform, and is available in 55-, 65-, and 75-inch sizes.
There will also be a range of cheaper QLED and direct LED sets; Probably the most notable are the new 32- and 40-inch Full HD TVs with QLED and Fire TV, which promise a slightly more premium picture than most small HD TVs get.
My favorite was a TV that is not in the range.
Noticeably missing from this list is a mini-LED RGB TV, which uses a colorful mini-LED backlight, although this has been adopted by other big TV manufacturers for 2026 launches. It wasn’t completely absent from the event, though: Panasonic had a demo of an RGB-backlit TV with its Glare Free technology, and this was the set that really caught my eye. You can read our explanation of RGB backlighting here if you want to learn more about the technology.
As you’d expect from an RGB TV, colors looked incredibly vibrant and infinitely complex (although Panasonic had put in a demo reel designed specifically to show this off, naturally). But I couldn’t really see any signs of blooming from the light areas to the black background, even though it looked bright and had a lot of pop – the hard line between solid colors and black seemed 100% clean.
This was made even more striking by the matte coating which prevented the black areas from reflecting the bright, chaotic space around me – we were in a large, open room filled with lights and TVs, and I could only see an occasional, very strong reflection from certain angles. Otherwise, dark tones remained looking black and obviously didn’t increase from black to deep gray (which can be a problem with matte displays).
Contrast was no doubt helped by the panel’s 10,000+ dimming zones, which is on par with the best mini-LED TV offering in a similar size, whether RGB mini-LED or regular mini-LED.
Panasonic explained that it has developed a new processor for this TV to address the large number of control elements required across the thousands of backlight elements, suggesting it is serious about producing it in the future.
I hope so, because with Panasonic’s history of putting picture accuracy so high among its priorities, I’d love what it can do with the incredible color depth that RGB TVs promise (all companies claim up to 100% of the pro-grade BT.2020 color space, when regular mini-LED TVs struggle to reach 80%).
I’m also very intrigued to see more of the Z86C OLED TV, but maybe I just have RGB TVs on the brain – they’re the big TV story this year and I already thought they’re a real danger to OLED TVs. My first look at Panasonic’s potential equipment only added to this, assuming they can get it out at a reasonable price at some point.
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