OLED lighting is an emerging solid-state lighting technology. It potentially provides a route into the large and growing global lighting market. The lighting market is however complex as it is a highly fragmented space thanks to the existence of a broad technology mix and a diversity of customer needs.The market segments include residential, office, industrial, outdoor, hospitality, shop and automotive. Each sector attaches a different degree of importance to upfront cost, energy efficiency, lifetime, light intensity, colour warmth and design features. This explains why the technology mix in each sector is different.IDTechEx assess the market potential for OLED lighting across all major lighting sectors. We forecast that the market will grow to 2.5 billion USD in 2027 (optimistic scenario). The market growth will however be very slow until 2019/2020 where the overall sales at panel level will remain below 200 million USD globally.Our forecast is segmented by sector. We find that architectural, hospitality and shop segments will be the first to grow as the prize design parameters the most. Automotive is also promising given the recent announcements by companies like BWM but lifetime and reliability still need to be improved. Residential, office, and outdoor to follow later once cost decreases and lifetime is prolonged. OLED lighting has the potential to efficiently emit warm light across large surfaces and to bring new and novel form factors into the lighting sector. These are strong selling points on their own but the challenge is in that they are not always unique.In particular, inorganic LED lighting has arrived first onto the market. Its technology, cost structure and supply base have dramatically improved, opening a large performance and cost gap between LEDs and the younger OLEDs. The performance gap has not drastically narrowed despite progress in OLEDs with companies such as Konica Minolta reporting champion 131 lm/W panels.The challenge facing OLEDs is therefore identifying paths for differentiation. The differentiation challenge is also critical strategy question because many companies such as Osram and Phillips Lighting already have successful and growing business in the LED sector. Investment in OLED can provide a hedged bet and also a means of standing out in an increasingly commoditised LED market.