Our Tech Predictions For 2026

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 27, 2025, 12:37 PM

Despite several years of turbulence caused by stymied dealmaking, growing cyber risks, and volatile market conditions, technology industry leaders should not expect the road ahead to smooth just yet. In 2026, technological and market forces will likely continue to disrupt every corner of the tech industry as agentic artificial intelligence (AI), alternative connectivity solutions, advanced robotics, and consolidation will reshape internal operations and... Here are BDO’s seven tech industry predictions for the new year. Companies that internalize these trends and master related tools, technologies, and ways of working could gain a strong competitive edge in the year ahead. The streaming wars, which have dominated the media industry over the last ten years as companies worked to meet consumer demands for easier access and more choice in entertainment, are coming to an end. In 2026, we expect to see accelerated consolidations among major streaming platforms, with newly formed mega players dominating the landscape.

According to BDO’s 2025 Media Report, 32% of media companies say they are planning to pursue buy-side mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to fuel growth in the year ahead, illustrating the scale of the coming... Read the full report to learn more. Consolidation will enable these super aggregators to bundle entertainment, commerce, and community features into unified ecosystems that offer personalized and adaptive user engagement. Consequently, competition will no longer center on content libraries alone. Winners in this era will be platforms that can offer customers the most comprehensive media experience under one roof, while smaller services find their own niche audiences or get absorbed into larger entities. PLUS: What I got right (and wrong) about 2025

As 2024 came to a close, I noted here that two big stories were beginning to crowd out everything else in tech: the rapid development and diffusion of artificial intelligence, and the shifting policies... Twelve months later, those stories did indeed define the year here at Platformer. On the product side, this year saw the first consumer agents, deep research, Google’s AI mode, OpenAI’s hardware ambitions, Sora, and the Atlas browser, among other key developments. Meanwhile, AI policy got both looser and more restrictive. Frontier AI labs eagerly made deals with the US military, reversing long-held policies against building weapons of war, and began leaning into adult content, from erotica in ChatGPT to Grok’s sexbot companion. On the other hand, amid rising evidence that chatbots were fueling a new mental health crisis, AI companies placed new restrictions on teen use and added parental controls.

All that took place against the backdrop of the new Trump administration, whose impact on the tech world was felt almost immediately. The year began with Meta’s surrender to the right on speech issues, a move that included changing its policies to allow for more dehumanizing speech against minority groups. It also killed its DEI program, a move followed by many of its peers, and shut down systems that once prevented the spread of misinformation. As 2025 draws to a close, the business and technology landscape is being redefined by a powerful mix of innovation and disruption. Gen AI, for example, continues to mature, evolving from creative companion to strategic co-pilot as organisations unlock efficiencies once buried in complexity. Sustainability is a key influence on tech trends, with it shifting from compliance-driven to growth-focused, now deeply embedded in the design and training of AI systems.

As well as this, quantum computing is edging closer to practical reality. To wrap up 2025, Technology Magazine lays out the defining trends set to shape 2026 – and beyond. Company in focus: ServiceNowCEO: Bill McDermottFounded: 2004 AI-driven vertical platforms are set to transform enterprise workflows in 2026. ServiceNow’s AI Platform has evolved beyond workflow automation into an orchestration hub, integrating intelligence and real-time data across domains like IT, HR and customer service. Its AI Agent Fabric and Orchestrator allow organisations to deploy domain-specific agents, automate complex tasks and bridge previously unconnected systems.

I asked ChatGPT to share 10 tech predictions for 2026—and the answers highlight how quickly AI, automation, and digital infrastructure are reshaping the way we work, build, and live. From AI agents and voice-first interfaces to smart manufacturing and personalized education, here’s a glimpse into what the next wave of technology could look like. 1. AI Agents Become Standard at Work AI won’t just assist—it will act. Autonomous AI agents will handle scheduling, reporting, customer support, coding tasks, and procurement with minimal human input. 2.

Voice Becomes the Primary AI Interface Typing will decline. Voice-first AI (especially in education, healthcare, and enterprise tools) will overtake chat-based interfaces due to speed and accessibility. 3. AI Regulation Gets Real Enforcement Governments will move beyond guidelines to mandatory compliance, audits, and penalties for AI misuse, bias, and data violations—especially in the EU, US, and India. 4. AI Hardware Boom Accelerates Demand for AI chips, edge devices, and private AI infrastructure will surge as enterprises move away from public-only cloud AI for cost, privacy, and control reasons.

The world of tech is always one of the fastest-paced. New ideas and solutions are proposed to revolutionize the way consumers interact with the world around them every day across every sector. For instance, artificial intelligence has ushered in one of the most volatile eras of technological evolution since the dot-com bubble at the turn of the century, and the wheel of innovation doesn't appear to... The evidence of this evolutionary strength is in the S&P 500 index; more specifically, the lopsided composition of its stocks' earnings. Although the index comprises the largest companies in the world by market cap, a new trend has appeared in the market. As of Q2 2025, the Mag 7 (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla) saw their earnings grow by 26% year-on-year, compared to just 1% for the rest of the index.

Advancements in AI have kept the industry booming. Given the breakneck speeds at which AI has progressed, it stands to reason that AI will shape the landscape of the broader technological economy by the end of 2026. Machine learning is already reshaping everything around us today, and we can expect that to continue. Now, we don't have a crystal ball, but here are our predictions of the emerging tech trends we expect to see by next year. When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in December 2022, it radically changed the way the average internet user interacted with content online. From students engineering essays to software engineering upstarts trying to pass a HackerRank interview, users flocked to the generative AI to solve problems that would ordinarily take hours in mere minutes.

The technology has only evolved for the better — GPT-5 can excel in the Math Olympiad — and has branched out into other usable applications. Enter agentic AI, artificial intelligence systems that don't just follow preset rules or churn out data based on a specific task. They actively carry out tasks for you, acting autonomously and always adapting according to information they interact with. SlashGear presents a view of how agentic AI can change the world. As Mashable's new tech editor, I get paid to stay on top of the latest tech trends, and I love my job. A lot happened in the tech world this year, but one technology dominated headlines more than any other — artificial intelligence.

Companies like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic made big advances in AI this year (though not as big as they might have hoped), both for better and worse. Not only that, but AI is now being integrated into virtually every tech product we own, even if you wish it wouldn't. So, what are the 2026 tech trends I'm eyeing as we approach the new year? Yes, generative AI and large-language models will continue to take up a lot of oxygen in the tech world, even if — and maybe especially if — the AI bubble finally pops, like the... Besides AI, you can look forward to exciting new foldable phones with more flexible displays. I also expect a lot of robots to enter the consumer market next year, as well as all the usual suspects from Apple, Samsung, Google, and Microsoft.

Let's get out our crystal balls and smart AR/XR glasses and preview the tech trends to come in 2026. It's getting hard to remember what Mark Zuckerberg looked like before he started wearing Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses at all of his public appearances. Like a lot of Silicon Valley leaders, Zuck is all-in on smart glasses, and virtually every big tech company is working on its own version of Meta's Ray-Ban Display augmented-reality glasses. Samsung, Apple, and Google are all rumored or confirmed to be making smart glasses, and we also saw the launch of the Xreal One Pro AR glasses earlier this year. I expect more smart AR glasses to launch next year, but even though Silicon Valley is convinced these gadgets are the future of personal computing, I'm not so sure. Zuck couldn't have been more wrong about the metaverse.

Even people who need to wear glasses for vision correction often do so reluctantly, and there's a reason face-worn computers have so far failed to launch. On top of that, a lot of people just don't want every single interaction potentially recorded by a person wearing smart glasses with built-in cameras and microphones. The Google Glasshole was reviled for a reason. In a world where technological advancements are accelerating at a rapid pace, businesses remain sensible about real-world gains. Enterprises are enthusiastic about deploying new technologies, but it’s up to vendors to show how their solutions meet their most urgent priorities. ABI Research has identified 13 key technology trends for 2026 to help the sector navigate the next wave of innovation.

In 2026, the pace of digital transformation will continue to accelerate, although not at an explosive rate. With Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions increasingly being integrated into enterprise systems, computing requirements are shifting. In the connectivity space, 6G deployments are ramping up and novel use cases are emerging. For the cybersecurity industry, compliance and changing customer attitudes are dictating product strategy. Our analysts see 2026 as mostly being a year of gradual modernization. The hope of visionary technologies has been replaced by the need for solutions that offer quick wins and solve immediate challenges.

In this article, ABI Research’s global analyst team identifies the top 13 technology trends we expect to shape 2026 across Artificial Intelligence, Cloud and Connectivity, and Security and Digital Trust. These latest developments are an amalgamation of analyst conversations, internal forecasts, and vendor activity. In 2026, open standards for AI infrastructure will become foundational to modern data center design. Interoperable frameworks like the Open Compute Project and Ultra Accelerator Link are making it easier to assemble modular AI clusters using best-in-class components from multiple vendors. ABI Research Senior Analyst Paul Schell tells us, “Such standards are important for building the next generation of AI data centers because they dismantle proprietary ecosystems and foster a more competitive environment.”

Our Tech Predictions For 2026

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