Every year, Superbooth offers a useful snapshot of where synthesizer design is heading, and the 2026 edition in Berlin made one trend hard to miss: MIDI Polyphonic Expression has stopped being a boutique feature reserved for a handful of specialist controllers. It's showing up across price points, form factors, and categories of gear that had nothing to do with MPE a few years ago.
Controller-Only Hardware Goes Mainstream
The most visible signal was Expressive E's Osmose CE, a controller-only edition of its acclaimed Osmose keybed that strips out the internal sound engine entirely and leans on the free Ctrl-e software ecosystem instead. Shipping in 49- and 61-key versions, the Osmose CE represents a specific bet: that enough musicians now own MPE-capable software instruments that a dedicated, sound-engine-free controller makes commercial sense on its own. That's a meaningfully different pitch than the original Osmose, which sold expression and synthesis as a single package.
Expression Reaching Budget and Mid-Tier Gear
MPE support used to be a hallmark of specialist instruments costing well over a thousand dollars. That's no longer strictly true. GS Music's Bree6 Keyboard, a keyboard version of the company's six-voice analog Bree6 synth, ships with semi-weighted keys, aftertouch, and MPE support at a price point well below flagship MPE hardware. Seeing per-note expression built into a mid-tier analog polysynth rather than reserved for a premium touch-surface controller is a meaningful signal about where manufacturers think the feature is headed — from differentiator to expected baseline.
Wearables and Alternative Controllers
Superbooth's expression story wasn't limited to keyboards. MiMU Gloves, the wearable gesture-control system that's been championed by artists including Imogen Heap, were on the floor as one of the more unusual demonstrations of what "playing" an MPE-capable instrument can look like when it isn't tied to a traditional keybed or touch surface at all. Alongside more conventional touch controllers, that range — from finger-worn sensors to grid-based surfaces to weighted keybeds — underlined how many different physical interfaces are now being built around the same underlying MPE data model.
Software Follows Hardware
The hardware side wasn't the whole story. Plugin developers including u-he and modular-adjacent hardware synth maker UDO Audio showed MPE-capable instruments and updates on the floor as well, reinforcing a pattern that's held for the past couple of years: as more MPE controllers reach musicians' studios, software developers have less reason to treat per-note expression as an edge case. It's increasingly assumed that a portion of a plugin's user base will be playing on something other than a standard MIDI keyboard.
Why This Keeps Happening
Part of what's driving the spread is simply installed base. Every new MPE controller sold — whether a $999 Osmose CE or a mid-tier analog keyboard with aftertouch — adds to a pool of musicians who expect their software and hardware synths to respond to per-note pitch, pressure, and timbre. DAW makers have followed the same curve: Ableton, Bitwig, and Logic all now ship built-in MPE support, which removes what used to be a real technical barrier to adoption. Once the DAW and the controller both speak MPE natively, the remaining friction point is just whether the sound source on the other end understands the data — and Superbooth 2026 suggested that gap is closing fast across categories that had nothing to do with MPE a few product cycles ago.
For musicians evaluating new gear, the practical implication is straightforward: MPE compatibility is becoming less of a special "does this specific device support it" question and more of a default assumption worth double-checking rather than ruling out.