#ShotShow

TANDEMKROSS used SHOT Show 2026 to announce their first complete firearm from start to finish. The TKX22 Light Rifle is a 10/22-compatible rifle built around the company's TKX22 receiver with everything but the stock manufactured in-house or OEM'd to their specs. At 3 pounds 6 ounces unloaded, it's one of the lightest rimfire rifles on the market and comes out of the box ready to shoot with fiber optic sights, a threaded barrel, and two magazines.

Franchi introduced the MULE (Momentum Utility Lite Elite) at SHOT Show 2026, and it's a modern take on the scout rifle concept built around their Momentum platform. The company isn't explicitly calling it a "scout rifle" in their marketing, but it checks all the boxes Jeff Cooper laid out decades ago. This is Franchi's answer to the truck gun, UTV rifle, and general-purpose utility carbine that lives ready by the back door.

RISE Triggers rolled out something different at SHOT Show 2026 with the Rev 535 trigger, and the standout feature is how it installs. The company built a new Slide-and-Snap system that eliminates the usual trigger pin hassle and gets the whole thing locked in place in under 60 seconds on mil-spec lowers. No hammer punches, no loose pins to chase across the workbench, and often no need to even pull the grip or safety selector.

Black Rain Ordnance brought their Freedom Fighter AK to SHOT Show 2026, marking the company's first production AK after shelving a prototype back in 2013. Built entirely in Neosho, Missouri, this isn't your typical import or parts-kit build. Black Rain went all-in on American manufacturing with a milled steel receiver and billet machined components throughout.

Caldwell used SHOT Show 2026 to roll out updates across their range gear lineup, and the Rock 2 rear rest series is the anchor of it. The Rock 2 is a redesign of one of the most popular benchtop rear rests in the shooting sports category, and it's coming in three flavors this year to cover everything from casual bench shooting to dedicated benchrest competition.

Retay USA came to SHOT Show 2026 with a full spread of new guns, expanding their shotgun lineup with four specialized ACE variants, a tactical 12-gauge inertia gun, a budget single-shot, and two .22LR rifles. Here's everything they announced.

Stoeger rolled out two new STR-series pistols at SHOT Show 2026, and both are refinements of existing platforms rather than ground-up redesigns. The STR9 Thinline+ takes the slim concealment pistol and pushes capacity up to 19+1 with a ported barrel, while the STR-45 Combat brings .45 ACP authority to the Combat platform with a 5.18-inch threaded barrel and 16-round magazines.

At SHOT Show 2026’s Industry Day at the Range TFB had the privilege of getting early access to the range to cover the ceremonial First Shot of SHOT. One of the benefits of this was we were able to get hands on as soon as the range went hot and I was able to put a couple of magazines through Steyr’s new AT family of 9x19mm pistols.

An integrally suppressed bullpup precision rifle - now doesn’t that sound like a cool package? Well that’s what Desert Tech have put together, a new handguard for an integrally suppressed version of their SRS series of rifles. The SRS SD kit is a carbon fiber handguard an and a full length Picatinny top rail which can be mounted on late model SRS A2s and SRS M2s.

Caldwell dropped the biggest piece of the ClayCopter puzzle at SHOT Show 2026 with the Surface-to-Air launcher. If you caught the  original ClayCopter handheld unit last year, this is the next step up. It’s a ground-based, hands-free launcher that turns your backyard into a sporting clays course. It's not a traditional clay thrower. The ClayCopter targets are biodegradable spinning disc-style targets that fly differently than standard clays, and they only break when you hit them, not when they drop.

Last year at SHOT Show 2025, I was stoked to run into the guys from Ally & Kaufman who were offering a cool lower receiver kit that pairs with a Brownells BRN-180 18.5" upper receiver to create the ‘SA80 at home’. This set up, the AKB-23 got a lot of attention and had developed further with an SA80-style pistol grip, a ‘Carbine’ handguard, L85 flash hiders and a range of SA80-style carry handles with sight mounts for ACROs and Micros.

Over the last couple of years the guys at MK Machining have been working up their MK2.6 bullpup rifle chassis series. This year at SHOT Show they had some brand new prototypes of a new type of bullpup - a straight-pull.

American-made AKs definitely saw a resurgence at this years SHOT Show with strong offerings from companies like Stenzel Industries and Black Rain Ordnance. Black Rain introduced the Freedom Fighter which they describe as ‘a modern American-made evolution of a proven fighting rifle’.

Century Arms announced an exclusive distribution partnership with Live Free Armory at SHOT Show 2026, bringing the Apollo 11 V2 budget 2011 pistol to their booth alongside the company's existing product lines. The partnership addresses supply constraints and lead times that have limited availability of Live Free Armory's affordable double-stack 1911 platform.

Berry's Bullets came to SHOT Show 2026 with a product refresh that addresses real needs handloaders have been dealing with. Three new bullet profiles and storage solutions that look like they'll actually hold up.