The 2026 global roadmap for textile-integrated wearable technologies in health

Wearable and textile-based technologies are transforming health monitoring by enabling continuous, non-invasive, and context-aware assessment of physiological and biochemical signals in daily life. Advances in flexible electronics, conductive fibers, smart materials, and artificial intelligence have driven a shift from rigid, device-centric wearables toward textile-integrated and garment-based systems capable of distributed sensing, actuation, energy harvesting, storage, and communication. This roadmap provides a textile-centric overview of the current state and future trajectory of wearable technologies for healthcare, with electronic textiles positioned as a distinct and strategically important class within the broader wearable ecosystem. We synthesize progress across textile-integrated sensing, therapeutic and protective garments, textile body-area networks, energy-autonomous systems, and embedded computing, while critically examining challenges related to signal reliability, manufacturability, scalability, data governance, regulation, and equity. Market trends and adoption patterns are discussed to contextualize translational pathways from laboratory prototypes to clinically deployable and scalable textile systems. By identifying key scientific, technological, and societal priorities, this roadmap outlines actionable directions to accelerate the integration of textile-based wearable technologies into preventive, personalized, and decentralized healthcare.