It's official: CES 2021 will be online only

For the first time in decades, the tech world is leaving Las Vegas alone in January.

The Consumer Technology Association announced Tuesday that CES 2021 will be an "all-digital event" running from Jan. 6 to Jan. 9, 2021, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The press release was light on specifics on how it'll actually work, but the point is clear: For the first time since 1967, there won't be a CES as we know it in Las Vegas or anywhere else.

Again, we still don't know exactly how the new digital CES will work for exhibitors and press. More than 170,000 people attended the last one in January, so there are plenty of mouths to feed as CES moves to an entirely virtual presentation.

This development shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, even though CES waited until now to drop the charade that the 2021 show would happen as previously scheduled. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, there were actually some concerns that CES may have helped spread the disease. Now, given the disastrous rise of case and death numbers in the U.S. since then, it's no wonder that people don't want to congregate in crowded conference halls and casinos in just a few months.

Don't worry, we'll still have plenty of coverage of all the latest weird TVs, internet-connected refrigerators, and brain-scanning toilets here at Mashable. We'll just learn about them over video calls instead of at the Las Vegas Convention Center.