LTO Capacity Shipments Grow 57% YoY in Q1 2026 as AI and Archive Demand Accelerates 

The LTO Program Technology Provider Companies (TPCs), Hewlett Packard Enterprise , International Business Machines Corporation, and Quantum Corporation, released their annual tape media shipment report, marking a pivotal year for the format as a new generation of higher-capacity media arrives to meet unrelenting growth in enterprise data.The continued strength of LTO-9 media shipments combined with the introduction and early ramp of LTO-10 technology contributed to substantial Y/Y growth in Q1 2026, with shipped capacity rising 57% over Q1 2025. These developments underscore the strength and resilience of the underlying market as demand for tape solutions continues to grow.

“We are seeing unprecedented data growth combined with increasing cost, energy, and cyber resilience pressures across the industry,” said Hugues Meyrath, CEO, Quantum. “As organizations adapt to this new reality, tape is increasingly viewed as a strategic component of modern data infrastructure, delivering predictable economics and resilient long-term data retention at scale.” 

The latest annual figures show a steady climb in density in each LTO generation vs. a backdrop of successive customer upgrade cycles. 2024 set an all-time record at 176.5 EBs, up 15.4%. While 2025 saw a modest 9% YoY decline to 160.3 EBs, shipped capacity was higher than any other year in history save 2024 itself, indicating structurally high demand for tape solutions. The 57% YoY shipment capacity growth in Q1 further underscores this continued strength, and the early 2026 release of a new 40 TB native-capacity cartridge also contributed to renewed and growing market interest.

LTO’s strong start to 2026 confirms that many customers are fully committed to growing their tape infrastructure, leveraging the technology to complement other primary and secondary storage platforms. The new shipment report signals that at the scale organizations now operate, tape belongs in every storage mix as an anchor vs. disruption. Tape absorbs relentless data growth at the lowest cost per terabyte, provides excellent cyber-resilience, and is highly power-efficient. As organisations adopt tape as the pivotal technology for meeting these challenges, and as customers on earlier gens upgrade alongside new adopters, LTO anticipates that 2026 will further strengthen the tape market with another record-setting year.

Access the LTO Program’s annual shipment reports here.