Tanya Weaver Thu 1 Jan 2026
Collected at: https://eandt.theiet.org/2025/12/19/ten-tech-predictions-2026
What will shape the tech landscape in 2026? We highlight 10 predictions from industry insiders, with AI and cyber security still dominating the conversation.
1. The democratisation of AI will create a constant surge in cyber threats
Chris Harris, EMEA technical director at Thales
The arrival of accessible, user-friendly AI tools has transformed the cyber landscape, empowering a far broader range of individuals to experiment with and deploy malicious code. What was once the domain of highly skilled threat actors is becoming increasingly democratised. The ability to generate, test and launch attacks is now available to anyone with curiosity and an internet connection, blurring the lines between amateur and professional. As a result, organisations should no longer expect predictable spikes in malicious activity instead, they face a persistent, all-year-round threat environment driven by AI-enabled opportunism.
2. AI-powered attacks will outpace human response
Brian Sibley, virtual CTO at Espria
Cyber criminals are increasingly deploying AI to conduct reconnaissance, craft convincing phishing campaigns and develop adaptive malware capable of rewriting itself to bypass detection. These ultra-fast, self-evolving attacks are expected to surpass the pace at which human responders can operate. AI has given attackers the ability to operate at machine speed, and no human-only security team can keep up with that.
3. AI-driven attacks will push companies toward regional cloud providers
Richard Copeland, CEO of Leaseweb
Cyber criminals are getting smarter, and they’re starting to use AI to target the largest, most complex cloud environments. Hyperscalers have hundreds of thousands of tenants, which means hundreds of thousands of potential attack surfaces (and pockets to pick). Regional providers have tighter vetting, cleaner environments and fewer noisy neighbours. In 2026, security-conscious organisations will realise that the safest place to run AI and high-value workloads often isn’t the biggest cloud, it’s the one that actually keeps out the wrong people.
4. The year AI goes invisible
Christian Pedersen, chief product officer at IFS
2026 will mark the moment when AI stops being the headline and becomes the habit. After years of experimentation and hype, AI is quietly embedding itself into the way work gets done. The question is no longer whether AI works, but how well it performs in the background of daily operations.
The fascination with ‘AI-first’ strategies will give way to seamless integration within business systems and physical processes. AI will move from being a feature to being the foundation. In the manufacturing, energy and service sectors, it will quietly power scheduling, inventory optimisation and predictive maintenance without anyone labelling it ‘AI’.
This shift is healthy. It signals that AI is entering its industrial phase – embedded, standardised and measurable. Organisations will compete not on whether they use AI, but on how effectively it drives performance.
5. Rethinking talent models in the AI economy
Steven Webb, UK chief technology officer at Capgemini
2026 will force organisations to face up to a core existential question: what does talent look like in a world where AI can perform many traditional ‘safe’ roles? At the same time, AI has the potential to make the roles young people hold more valuable, not less.
The scale of change cannot be ignored. The UK needs a talent strategy that ensures young people are positioned to benefit. That means supporting them into sustainable careers, creating clearer pathways into emerging fields and equipping early-career employees with the adaptive, AI-fluency skills that will define the next decade of work.
AI’s impact on the labour market can be a net positive. It has the potential to stimulate job creation, improve labour market efficiency, and drive productivity growth. But realising that upside will require deeper collaboration between the government, the UK’s technology sector, and the organisations best placed to engage and prepare young people for the future.
6. Quantum in the real world
Chintan Patel, UKI chief technology officer at Cisco
Quantum computing is shifting from ‘Can we really do this?’ to ‘What can it unlock?’, with complex problems in medicine and physics among the primary targets. The race to quantum-safe infrastructure will intensify, with organisations investing in post-quantum cryptography and regional quantum innovation hubs. In 2026, Cisco engineers will continue working on a network built on the unique behaviour of quantum particles to connect quantum computers and share information securely.
7. The year of ‘quiet climate’
Juliette Devillard, founder and CEO of Climate Connection
Climate start-ups and investors will still be working on the same solutions, but they will quietly rebrand themselves and their work to take ‘climate’ out of their communication. We’ve already seen this in action, with investors branding new venture capital funds as ‘efficiency tech’ or ‘deep tech’.
Companies in the climate sector won’t change their fundamental mission, but their communication will focus on outcomes for customers, cost savings and efficiency, rather than ‘impact’ or ‘climate‘ metrics.
These climate businesses could have great success in 2026 because they offer valuable, efficient solutions that help their customers save money.
8. The gap between manufacturers that invest in technological innovation and those that don’t will widen
Asif Moghal, director of design and manufacturing at Autodesk
Technology and ambition are accelerating faster than ever, and companies that refuse to adapt risk falling irreversibly behind. The future of design and manufacturing will be shaped by AI-driven design intelligence, sustainable manufacturing as a profit centre and the platformisation of supply chains. Collaboration among small businesses will redefine agility and require supportive policy frameworks. Companies that embrace technology alongside the capabilities of their existing workforce in 2026 will lead the move towards truly connected, digital factories.
9. ‘Green gridlock’ will come for every economy in 2026
Taco Engelaar, SVP and managing director at Neara
It’s a paradox we’re seeing play out across the globe: the faster a country moves on clean energy, the sooner it collides with transmission constraints. Renewables grow, but grid capacity is left lacking – leading to lengthy connection queues and racking up huge costs in delayed projects and lost investment.
2026 will see smart grid planning take centre stage. Right now, utilities are stuck between the grid and a hard place. Multiple competing challenges must be addressed – from lack of capacity and transmission constraints to resilience planning and failing assets. But resources are finite; not everything can be fixed at once. Working out which problems to prioritise and where to focus resources is a delicate balancing act.
10. Cloud 3.0: all flavours of cloud
Pascal Brier, chief innovation officer at Capgemini
Cloud is entering its next evolution, a phase where hybrid, private, multi-cloud and sovereign architectures are no longer niche, but fundamental to how AI runs at scale, to the point it is becoming the operational backbone for AI and agentic workloads. AI cannot scale and get the right performance on classical public cloud alone, pushing adoption of all other models of cloud.
In this Cloud 3.0 era the possibilities for organisations to tailor their cloud consumption to their various requirements – notably in terms of redundancy of assets, criticality and latency – will increase. At the same time, however, while this may add resilience it could also bring complexity for them to manage, putting pressure on cloud providers to improve interoperability in their multi-vendor strategies. In the Cloud 3.0 era, organisations will need to ensure they are equipped with the right skills, agile governance and adaptive mindset that enable confident operations across diverse cloud environments.
Leave a Reply