With the Vietnamese market receiving numerous reports from consumers suffering significant losses from using counterfeit paint, AkzoNobel, the producers of Dulux and Maxilite paint, has officially reaffirmed its commitment to product quality and announced support activities to help customers identify genuine products.

The International Optical Technologies Association (IOTA) patent newsletter provides crucial insights to its members. In the January 2026 edition of the patent newsletter, over 100 patents were featured, highlighting the latest advancements in the evolving field of optics, which spans security, display technologies, and scientific tools.

Uchkun OJSC (Open Joint Stock Company), Kyrgyzstan’s state-owned security printing house, has joined the International Optical Technologies Association (IOTA), becoming the association’s first member from the country. The move gives Central Asia a stronger presence in the international optical security community, as well as cementing IOTA’s position as a truly global body, spanning all continents and major regions.

The organisers of the Optical & Digital Document Security™ (ODDS) conference announce the Call for Papers for ODDS 2027, inviting researchers, technologists, and practitioners to submit original work on document and identity system security.

The High Security Printing (HSP) EMEA Awards continue to serve as the region’s leading platform for recognising excellence in design and innovation for banknotes and IDs. This year’s HSP EMEA awards were held on 10 February in Rabat, Morocco (see also page 8). In this edition, we are covering the ID awards, followed by the best innovation in banknotes in the next edition.

This February, HSP EMEA marked its 22nd edition with its largest event yet. For the first time, the conference was held in Morocco and on the African continent, highlighting the region’s rising role in secure printing, identity management, and related technologies.

A research team from Tsinghua University has unveiled a transformative technique for super-high-speed 3D printing. Published recently in Nature, the study details how the team can now print complex, millimetre-scale objects in as little as 0.6 seconds. The cornerstone of this advancement is a process called Digital Incoherent Synthesis of Holographic light fields (DISH).

In April 2022, Holography News (the predecessor to Holography & Optical Technology News™) published an in-depth interview with Chris Rich, co-founder and CEO of WaveFront Technology, charting more than three decades at the forefront of holography. That conversation explored WaveFront’s origins in recombination and tooling, its evolution into deep microstructure UV-casting and freeform optical technologies, and the company’s vision to integrate macro, micro and nanostructures into unified optical security features.

The UK is navigating a pivotal moment in its national infrastructure, embarking on major security printing tenders totalling over £1 billion. These flagship programs, covering banknotes, passports, and excise-control stamps, will define the country’s currency, identity, and tax-enforcement landscape for the next decade.

The Bank of Russia introduced a redesigned 1,000 ruble banknote on 26 December 2025, featuring the Volga Federal District and Nizhny Novgorod.

Banknote security specialist Hueck Folien has acquired California-based WaveFront Technology LLC, transforming the Austrian firm into a ‘full-liner’ with end-to-end control over the security feature lifecycle. By integrating WaveFront’s 30-year expertise in micro and nanostructures, Hueck Folien secures strategic independence and the ability to originate custom optical designs in-house. The value of the transaction was not disclosed.

Back in our November 2025 editorial for Holography & Optical Technology News™, we said that collaboration was becoming a smarter strategic pathway than aggressive acquisitions, which appeared to have reached a natural peak. This shift encouraged more agile partnership models, offering companies a faster route to innovation in the rapidly evolving anticounterfeiting landscape.

Vehicle emission monitoring in Karnataka (India) has come to a standstill, with more than 400 Pollution Under Control (PUC) centres forced to shut due to a shortage of mandatory hologram stickers.

The Banknote Conference 2026 will take place 11-14 May in Washington DC. Even though the event is still months away, the organiser, Currency Research, has already shared details about six pre-event workshops and the first tranche of confirmed speakers, showing that a strong, technical program is planned.

The Central Bank of Seychelles (CBS) has introduced an upgraded version of its highest-value banknote, the 500 Seychellois rupee (SCR), replacing the superwide Optiks thread (which has now been discontinued as a security feature) with a holographic stripe. The new 500 rupee banknotes entered circulation in December 2025.

Many efforts to use holographic storage for computer memory have fallen by the wayside, but the approach being taken by London-based HoloMem might finally see holograms used successfully as a means of archiving records efficiently while allowing rapid access.

The International Optical Technologies Association (IOTA) announced the winners of its inaugural Excellence in Optical Technologies Awards 2025 at the Optical & Digital Document Security™ (ODDS) Conference in Warsaw, Poland (see HOT News, September 2025).

Scientific Games (SG), the world’s leading lottery company and a long-time pioneer in holographic instant scratch games, has unveiled Obsidian, its latest premium breakthrough in scratch game design.

Reconnaissance, publisher of Holography & Optical Technology News™ and organiser of the High Security Printing™ (HSP) conference series, has confirmed that final preparations for HSP EMEA 2026 are underway, with registrations filling near capacity. The event will take place from 9-11 February 2026 in Rabat, Morocco, and registration will close soon.

Instantly access and analyse any documents, anywhere in the world, with DocCheck, a new member service for the International Optical Technologies Association (IOTA). This powerful tool is available to IOTA members starting January 2026.