It has been seven years already since the HDMI organisation announced the HDMI 2.1 specification, and it’s now ready to unveil the next generation, HDMI 2.2, at the Consumer Electronics Show next month.
HDMI stands for High Definition Multimedia Interface, and it’s one of the key connectivity standards for audio-visual devices such as televisions, monitors, projectors and AV receivers. If you’ve bought a new TV recently, there’s a very good chance that HDMI 2.1 is what you use to connect your soundbars and games consoles to it.
The last update to HDMI came in 2023, when the HDMI 2.1b standard was launched. That was a fairly significant upgrade, bringing with it support for higher video resolutions of up to 10K, faster refresh rates of up to 120Hz, dynamic HDR and data transfer bandwidth of up to 48Gbps.
The HDMI 2.2 standard will likely improve on those specifications. The German-language technology news website ComputerBase was the first to report what’s happening, saying it received an email from the HDMI Forum that stated:
“The HDMI Forum will be announcing a new HDMI Specification release. The new specification, with next-gen HDMI® Technology and higher bandwidth, enables a wide range of higher resolutions and refresh rates and will be supported with a new HDMI Cable. New technology enables higher quality options now and in the future.”
Aside from that memo, there are no other details of what to expect, so we can’t say what the limits of that higher bandwidth will be, and nor can we say anything about the new refresh rates and resolutions. We note, however, that DisplayPort 2.1 currently supports up to 80Gbps bandwidth, so we wouldn’t be surprised to see HDMI 2.2 match or exceed that.
In addition, the email doesn’t specifically mention HDMI 2.2, so the update could in fact just be a HDMI 2.1c specification, though that would be a lot less exciting. If the Forum decides to adopt the name “HDMI 2.2”, it’s likely to have a bigger impact, marketing-wise, and could allow companies to sell this new cable at a higher price.
For consumers, the update probably won’t have any immediate impact. The HDMI Forum announced HDMI 2.1 way back in 2017, but we didn’t really see many TVs or other devices support it until a couple of years later, and we suspect that the same will happen with HDMI 2.2.
At least, when HDMI 2.2 does arrive, your older TVs and devices will still work as normal, as the HDMI standard is always backwards compatible when a new version is rolled out. We’ll likely see HDMI 2.2 emerge in premium TVs and graphics cards beginning in 2026 or 2027, and then filter down into more affordable devices after that.
