Audi and OLEDWorks marked 10 years of organic light emitting diode (OLED) lighting in production vehicles at an event hosted by Audi in Ingolstadt on 15 October 2026. The gathering brought together pioneers, engineers, designers, and industry leaders who helped develop OLED from an emerging technology into an established platform for automotive lighting.
The celebration recognises a decade-long journey that began with Audi’s vision to reimagine vehicle lighting through OLED technology. From the industry’s first OLED rear lights in production vehicles to today’s highly segmented digital OLED rear light systems capable of communication, personalisation, and dynamic interaction with the world around the vehicle, OLED lighting has fundamentally expanded the role of light in automotive design.
Years of close collaboration
For OLEDWorks, the milestone represents years of close collaboration with Audi to transform ambitious OLED lighting concepts into automotive-qualified products capable of surviving the demanding conditions of the road.
“More than ten years ago, Audi had a vision of what automotive lighting could become with OLED lighting,” said David DeJoy, Chief Executive Officer of OLEDWorks. “Today we celebrate far more than a technology milestone. We celebrate the engineers, designers, manufacturing teams, suppliers, and visionaries who believed that OLED could become an intelligent automotive light engine. Together with Audi, we have transformed the vision from a beautiful concept into a platform for brand identity, safety communication, personalisation, and customer experience.”
From vision to reality
The OLED lighting journey began in the early 2010s when automotive designers started searching for a technology capable of delivering a pure, uniform light surface rather than a conventional point-source appearance.
The Audi lighting team believed in the capabilities of OLED lighting for automotive applications and championed an executable path to deliver the promise of OLED lighting at Audi.
“From the beginning, OLED offered something fundamentally different,” said Stephan Berlitz, Head of Development Lighting at AUDI AG. “Designers were no longer constrained by the optics of a light source. For the first time, they could design the light itself. That shift opened entirely new possibilities for expressing brand identity, intelligent function, and creating novel customer experiences.”
The first production applications demonstrated OLED’s ability to deliver extraordinarily thin, homogeneous lighting surfaces. Those initial systems established the foundation for what would become a decade of continuous innovation.
Digital OLED 2.0: Digitalising the light
The next major breakthrough emerged through the collaboration between Audi, OLEDWorks, and Marelli with the introduction of second-generation digital OLED rear lights in the Audi Q6 e-tron.
Recognised with the prestigious Automotive News PACE Award, the technology uses highly segmented OLED panels to enable selectable digital light signatures and communication functions. Warning symbols in defined situations can alert other road users to potential hazards, while customers can personalise the appearance of the rear lighting through multiple available digital light signatures.
“Digital OLED 2.0 represented a turning point for our industry,” said Dr. Werner Thomas, Project Manager OLED-lighting, Audi AG. “It allowed us to move beyond illumination and begin using light as a communication medium. We demonstrated that strikingly beautiful lighting could become software-defined, customisable, and capable of conveying information to other road users. That transformation required extraordinary collaboration across Audi, OLEDWorks and many other suppliers and partners.”
Today, digital OLED technology enables drivers to select personalised digital light signatures while supporting advanced safety and communication functions, positioning lighting as a central element in future mobility experiences.