If you’ve bought a new TV, a pair of earbuds, or you were smart and bought an Android phone in the past year, there’s a decent chance it already supports a Bluetooth feature you’ve never heard of. It’s called Auracast, and in 2026 it has quietly moved from technical demo to real-world function — in airport terminals, living rooms, and pockets around the world.
Auracast won’t change how your headphones connect to your phone. What it changes is what happens when one device needs to talk to many, this no doubt is a needed feature — a TV broadcasting to every headset in the room, or an airport gate sending an announcement straight into a stranger’s hearing aid. Here’s what it actually is, where it’s showing up, and how to tell if your own devices already support it.
What Auracast actually is
Auracast is a broadcast audio feature built on Bluetooth LE Audio, the low-energy audio standard introduced with Bluetooth 5.2. According to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), which defines what is the Bluetooth standard, LE Audio added broadcast audio as a new capability that lets a single audio source device stream to an unlimited number of supported receiver devices at once — hearing aids, earbuds, headphones, soundbars, and more, regardless of brand.
That “one-to-many, no pairing required” part is the key golden nugget from ordinary Bluetooth. Standard Bluetooth audio is built around a private, paired connection between two devices — your phone and your earbuds. Auracast however uses what the standard calls Broadcast Isochronous Streams (BIS), one of three foundational technical building blocks of LE Audio alongside the efficient LC3 audio codec and multi-stream audio support. In practice, that means a TV, a PA system, or any other Auracast transmitter can push out one or more audio streams — potentially in different languages — that any nearby Auracast-enabled receiver can pick up, kind of how you’d tune a radio to a station, without ever pairing to the source.
The specific set of configurations that make this work across different brands and devices is formally defined in the Bluetooth SIG’s Public Broadcast Profile. You can find the full technical detail in the Bluetooth SIG’s own LE Audio FAQ, which remains the most authoritative explanation of how the standard is built.
Auracast itself isn’t brand new — the Bluetooth SIG introduced it as an optional extension to Bluetooth 5.2 back in 2022. What’s changed is that the ecosystem of devices actually supporting it. This year, finally, this number has become large enough to notice.
Frankfurt Airport: the first real public deployment
The clearest sign that Auracast has left the lab, is Frankfurt Airport, which in February 2026 became the first airport in the world to send gate announcements directly to passengers’ own hearing aids, earbuds, and smartphones. The trial is running at two gates, A16 and A17 in Terminal 1, with Auracast transmitters integrated directly into existing PAXModular IP paging stations from Sittig Technologies.
Johannes Sittig, CEO of Sittig Technologies, put the significance plainly: “Auracast fundamentally changes how announcements work in airports.” Alexander Laukenmann, Fraport’s senior executive vice president of aviation, framed it as an accessibility milestone: “By bringing clear, personalized announcements directly into passengers’ own hearing devices, we are offering another attractive service to our customers while at the same time taking an important step toward a more inclusive airport.”
That inclusivity angle isn’t incidental. Fraport’s data notes that more than 1.5 billion people globally — roughly one in five — live with some form of hearing loss, a population who endured airport announcement babbling have long been a genuine source of stress. Peter Justesen, president of GN’s hearing division, which partnered on the project, stated Frankfurt Airport is “setting a new standard for inclusive travel.” The trial is set to run for two months while partners gather passenger feedback, so this is a pilot rather than a permanent feature, atleast for now — but it’s the first time the technology has left trade-show demos for a live, public setting.
Your TV might already be a broadcaster
Televisions have turned out to be one of Auracast’s most natural homes, since a TV can broadcast its own audio to every compatible headset in the room — handy for anyone watching at a volume that annoys everyone else, or needing a boost that the room’s speakers don’t give them.
Samsung got there first, bringing Auracast to its high-end TVs in August 2023. LG followed in 2025, adding support to its OLED and select LCD models, with its implementation offering selectable audio quality tiers at 16kHz, 24kHz, and 48kHz. Panasonic also rolled out Auracast on some 2024-2025 models, though exact sequencing across these manufacturers isn’t fully consistent across industry trackers.
The newest entrant is Philips, which has confirmed Auracast will come to its 2026 television range. Specialist tracking site Aurahear lists eleven confirmed Auracast-enabled Philips models for 2026: the OLED951, OLED911, OLED811, OLED761, MLED981, PUS9001, PUS8701, PUS8601, PUS8501, PUS8001, and PUS7801. Notably, any Philips PUS model numbered below 7801 does not get the feature — probably worth checking before you assume your reasonably priced buy has it.
On the software side, Android TV OS 14 now bakes in support for TV manufacturers to build Auracast broadcasting directly into their sets, and the Bluetooth SIG’s own tracking shows Samsung, LG, Hisense, TCL and others already shipping with it.
Phones, earbuds, and the Android push
The other major front is mobile. Google has been updating Android to let devices create, listen to, and switch between public Auracast broadcasts, and Android 16 is the version that has brought this to a mainstream audience. Google Pixel owners with supported hardware can now use “Audio sharing” — Google’s name for Auracast broadcasting and receiving — out of the box.
Support isn’t universal even within Google’s own lineup: Pixel 8, 9, and 10 generations get it, but the budget Pixel 8a and 9a are excluded for technical reasons. Beyond Pixel, the compatible ecosystem is expanding to include Sony headphones and a range of Samsung, Xiaomi, and POCO phones.
On the earbud side, Sony’s WH-1000XM5 and WH-1000XM6 headphones support the feature under the “Audio Sharing” name. Perhaps more exciting is Auracast has reached well below flagship price points: budget specialist EarFun has included it in its $100 Air Pro 4 earbuds, with the company reportedly spending months working through compatibility issues with chipmaker Qualcomm to get there — a sign that broadcast audio is being treated as a mainstream feature rather than a premium add-on.
Do you already have it?
Because Auracast has arrived gradually — a TV firmware update here, a phone software update there — it’s entirely possible to own a fully Auracast-capable setup without realising itm you may be an update away. If you’ve bought a 2023-or-later Samsung TV, a 2025 LG OLED, a recent Pixel phone, or newer Sony or budget earbuds, it’s worth checking your device settings or the manual for “Auracast” or “Audio sharing” before assuming you need new hardware.
One gap worth flagging for iPhone owners: there’s no confirmed native Auracast support in iOS at the time of writing. Reports suggest iPhone users currently need a third-party helper app to tap into Auracast broadcasts, and neither Apple nor independent sources have confirmed if or when OS-level support might arrive. cough….
What’s clear is the direction of travel. A feature that was a 2022 spec footnote is now showing up in airport terminals, mid-range televisions, and budget earbuds within the same year — not because of any single flashy launch, but because enough manufacturers have finally added support that the pieces are starting to fall into place nicely. The next time you’re in a terminal, a living room or an electronics shop, it may be worth asking whether they have audio sharing but also consider whether the device in front of you already supports it
