Tech Trends 2026

Key Takeaways

On 15 January 2026, Brands2Life hosted its annual Tech Trends event, bringing together a panel of leading technology journalists for a wide-ranging and thought-provoking discussion on what lies ahead for the tech sector.

Over the course of the 90-minute session, the panel explored a number of defining trends shaping 2026, including:

• Growing questions over the sustainability of the AI boom and whether today’s valuations are built to last
• The rising energy demands of AI, and the impact this could have on governments, infrastructure and consumers
• A shift beyond large language models towards robotics, spatial intelligence and frontier AI
• AI’s social and regulatory reckoning, from online safety and deepfakes to trust and human behaviour
• China’s accelerating role in the global AI race, driven by scale and open-source innovation
• Health tech coming of age, alongside stablecoins edging closer to the mainstream financial system

If you’d like to revisit the key insights or share them with colleagues, we’ve compiled a full write-up of the discussion below. You can download the report by clicking the download button in the bottom right of the frame.

We hope you find the report insightful, and if you’d like to discuss any of the trends, we’d love to chat. We hope to see you at Tech Trends next year.