Nick Indge reported from Pinball Expo 2026 in Schaumburg, Illinois for Ars Technica, after touring Stern Pinball’s factory in Elk Grove. Stern designer George Gomez told the tour group that Stern controls about 90 percent of the pinball market at any given time. The other 10 percent is where much of the new work is happening.

Multimorphic showed its P3 platform, where the lower two-thirds of the machine is a ball-tracking interactive display with floating flippers, slings, and targets, and the upper third is a swappable playfield. Ten playfields exist now, and about 30 games run on the system. Multimorphic offers a free SDK so anyone can write and sell P3 games. Its Dungeon Crawler Carl machine goes into production at the end of the year.

Developer Johnny Zen demonstrated Pocket Pinball, a free Android APK that loads Visual Pinball X tables on a phone or tablet, plus a closed beta of a browser-based Pinball Construction Set with drag-and-drop ramps, targets, and scoops.…