Meta Connect 2025 will take place on September 17 and 18.
Connect is Meta’s annual XR conference, its primary event since the last F8 in 2021. Originally called Oculus Connect, from the first in 2014 until the sixth in 2019, the event sees the company announce VR, AR, and smart glasses hardware, software, and new developer tools, as well as show off some of its research towards the future of XR.
In 2023 and 2024, Meta also used Connect to announce its latest AI models and experiences, including its Llama large language model (LLM) family. This year though, Meta is spinning that off into a new dedicated AI event called LlamaCon, which will take place on April 29.
Connect 2025, then, will see Meta “share the latest and greatest in Meta Horizon updates, peel back the curtain on tomorrow’s tech, and give XR devs the tools they need to help build for the next computing platform today.”
What’s Expected At Meta Connect 2025?
Meta hasn’t revealed any specific details of what it will announce, and the company usually doesn’t in advance, bar a few teases from Mark Zuckerberg in the days before.
But reports from reliable sources like Bloomberg and The Information do give us some indication of what’s expected.
For starters, Meta isn’t expected to launch a new Quest headset this year. The company only just launched Quest 3S at last year’s Connect, solidifying its current generation lineup, and according to a Meta roadmap leaked to The Information last year, Quest 4 and Quest 4S are slated for 2026.
What we might see however, is the first third-party headsets running Meta’s Horizon OS, the platform that Quest headsets run. A potential leak last month suggests Asus will be first with a gaming-focused ROG Horizon OS headset, and Lenovo confirmed it was still working on its Horizon OS headset (expected to focus on productivity) back in October.
David Heaney
What we do expect Meta to launch is new smart glasses; both in partnership with EssilorLuxottica and on its own.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported last month that Meta and EssilorLuxottica plan to launch Oakley Meta glasses to sell alongside the Ray-Ban Meta glasses. While the Ray-Ban glasses have a camera on one side and are aimed towards all consumers, the Oakley glasses would have the camera in the center and be marketed towards “cyclists and other athletes”.
David Heaney
Separately, The Verge, The Information, and The Financial Times have all previously reported that Meta intends to release smart glasses with a heads-up display (HUD), codenamed Hypernova, later this year.
It seems that Hypernova won’t carry the Ray-Ban brand, but what is known is that it will include a small waveguide display on one of the lenses to show notifications, output text instead of audio from the Meta AI assistant, and to help frame photos before taking them.
Gurman reported that Meta employees are telling him to expect Hypernova to cost around $1000. Further, he says Meta “has discussed” including the EMG wristband (demoed with the Orion prototype) in the box of Hypernova, with a backup plan of using touch controls on the temple like its other smart glasses.
David Heaney
To be clear though, Meta hasn’t confirmed any of this, and the company could have surprises in store or change its plans between now and September. UploadVR will bring you full coverage of Meta Connect 2025, breaking down the biggest announcements and plotting Meta’s path into the second half of this decade as it competes with the other tech giants to own the future of personal computing.
