What just happened? The last major TV maker producing 8K OLED and LCD televisions has officially stepped away from the format, marking what appears to be the end of the 8K era before it ever found its audience. LG's quiet discontinuation of 8K in late 2025, including the Z3 OLED and QNED99T LCD series, closes a chapter that began with its push toward ultra-high-resolution displays in 2019.
When LG introduced the 88-inch Z9, it became the face of 8K OLED innovation – a rare product that combined cutting-edge self-emissive technology with a linear resolution twice that of 4K.
Over the following years, LG rolled out successor models under the ZX, Z1, Z2, and Z3 names, offering smaller options such as a 77-inch variant and continued refinements to brightness, processing, and panel calibration. Yet by late 2025, production had been halted with no plans for a Z4 in 2026.
The technical ambition was never in doubt, but the ecosystem failed to materialize. There is almost no true 8K content available, and even major streaming platforms have shown little interest in supporting such bandwidth-heavy formats.
Meanwhile, compressed 8K video over HDMI 2.1 posed a major compatibility problem, leaving users with premium displays unable to reliably handle real 8K signals. The PlayStation 5 Pro's added 8K support in late 2024 only highlighted that problem: few TVs could even accept the resolution flawlessly.
Panel production has also stopped. LG Display confirmed to FlatpanelsHD that its 8K OLED development program has been suspended, though the company could revive it if market conditions shift.
On the LCD side, LG's SM99 and QNED99 series once offered a broader range of 8K options, but the lineup gradually narrowed after 2021 and disappeared entirely by early 2026. Retail listings for the QNED99T now show "out of stock" across most regions.
The reversal is especially striking given the earlier marketing disputes that accompanied the technology's rise. LG positioned its OLED panels as "Real 8K," contrasting them with Samsung's Neo QLED models. For all of that branding effort, the result was the same across the industry: 8K televisions became symbols of technical prowess, not viable consumer products.
LG's exit follows a pattern. TCL pulled out in 2023, Sony bowed out in 2025, and Hisense has largely abandoned its attempts as well. Panasonic never moved beyond internal prototypes, while Philips – despite showing experimental 8K sets at trade shows – continues to describe the market as "not ready." Only Samsung remains active, but even its 2026 plans are unclear, with few signs of new models on the immediate horizon.
Masthead credit: FlatpanelsHD