We wrap up the newest learning and development trends that will get you ahead of the game in 2026.
Looking for the biggest L&D trends for 2026? While it might feel like the landscape is dominated by AI (as has been the case the past few years), there’s so much more going on than just AI.
So many opportunities to try new things, refocus your efforts and hopefully drive impact with the people consuming your learning.
Based on industry research – aka what the giants in the space are saying – as well as notes from some of our leadership team and insights from our very own customers, we bring to you the 9 best L&D trends to follow in 2026.
TL:DR: the learning and development trends for 2026 wrapped up
- Address skills gaps with integrated platforms
- Track outcomes not activities
- Build journeys and move away from catalogues
- Ramp up social learning to community learning
- Integrate AI agents to your platform
- The future of skills looks dim?
- Mobile-ready frontline working
- The role of roleplay in learning
- A refocus on leadership
Let’s look at each of these key trends in detail.
1. Address skills gap with integrated platforms
In our L&D trends 2025 blog, we talked about a focus on skills and improving the skills gap.
Frankly, closing skills gaps will always be an L&D focus while technology continues to change and evolve.
But, what we’re noticing this year is a disconnect.
A 2025 Skillsoft survey revealed that only 10% of HR and L&D professionals believe their workforce has the right skills for the coming year.
Some of those critical gaps in knowledge included:
- AI
- Leadership
- And technical skills
But that’s not all when it comes to integrated learning.
In L&D we often talk about learning in the flow of work. And we’ve created workarounds to that like microlearning and just-in-time learning.
Those methods are still valid, but how do we take it to the next level?
One such method that’s being toyed with at the moment, is the ability to integrate learning more directly into platforms we already use.
Whether that’s a CRM or a website – how can we increase the knowledge application to save clicking in and out of browsers to reduce disruption to work?
Getting that right will be key for 2026.
2. Outcomes not activities
When it comes to proving the worth of L&D, we become very quantitative with our data.
We track things like:
- Number of courses enrolled
- Number of courses completed
- And so on
But L&D leaders are now questioning the validity of these metrics.
And quite rightly, too.
While we need quantitative data to prove the ROI of L&D, the focus for 2026 is to instead look at learning outcomes.
That’s not just ‘Did they complete my course?’, but real time measurements of what has been gained from completing your course.
This sounds a lot more difficult than it actually is in practice.
The key?
Setting up and collecting your metrics before the course is shared.
Let’s use BuildEmpire as an example.
We might track the number of support tickets that we get asking questions about how to use different features in Totara.
But then, we share a course with our users via the Totara Community. The course covers some of the key stumbling blocks we saw via the ticket inputs.
3 months later, our quantity of support tickets per month has dropped and we can confidently attribute that back to our learning.
3. Journeys not catalogues
We get obsessed with creating more and more content, and with that, we often forget about how people will actually find the content.
Every LMS has a course catalogue where visitors can scroll potentially endlessly through a range of content.
And while you might have filters, and segments or other easy ways to find relevant content, it’s still just not quite enough.
Nate Treavis, CPO at Build Empire, who spends most of his time speaking to our customers said this:
“Our users’ main priority is easy access to learning. They want learners to be able to get to their most important or urgent learning easily.”
So how do we switch the focus?
Make personalised learning key.
When you’re building your dashboards, make use of blocks to serve the right content at the right time, to the right people.
Here’s a few examples of that in practice.
My courses block
When you log into Netflix, you’ll find a section called ‘My List’. That’s essentially all of the titles that you’ve chosen to add to come back to at a later date.
In a similar vein, we created the ‘My Courses’ block to allow learners to automatically add courses to a section on their homepage dashboard.
This block will collate all the courses they’re currently enrolled in and show progress as well as completion rate.
Next activity block
You might have started a key piece of learning and then need to log out at the end of the day. Not quite finished, you come back the following day to finish it off, and you’ve got to trawl through the catalogue to find it.
Instead, with a Next Activity block, you can push the last-accessed content right to the top of your learner’s homepage.
Recommended activities
Ever had it where you engage in a piece of content and just want more?
You could find that a piece of learning content kickstarts a new interest for the consumer, and so, why wouldn’t you want to share more of that.
With this custom block, you can add related and recommended content to the user in an easy-to-read format.
4. Community-led learning
In recent years, the L&D community has been focused on social learning. That’s learning through interaction, collaboration and shared experiences.
Related: Social learning examples to test out
Platforms like LinkedIn Learning, Slack communities, and cohort-based courses proved that learning doesn’t happen in isolation; it thrives in conversation.
But as we head into 2026, this trend is evolving.
We’re now entering the era of community-led learning where the community itself drives the agenda, content, and learning pathways.
So instead of just experts or organisations dictating what people should learn, communities are becoming co-creators of knowledge.
This shift is fueled by a few key forces:
- Decentralised expertise: In every niche, practitioners and enthusiasts are sharing firsthand insights that outpace traditional curricula and frankly, have more impact.
- Trust in peers over institutions: Learners increasingly value real-world experience and collective wisdom over top-down instruction.
- Technology that empowers collaboration: Tools for live discussions, asynchronous sharing, and peer recognition (from Discord to new community-learning platforms) make it easy for groups to self-organise and sustain learning ecosystems.
Get it right and community-led learning can take the best parts of social learning and add to it so it’s well worth looking at exploring this year.
5. Integrate AI agents to your platform
Artificial Intelligence has been reshaping learning for years but it’s really ramping up now.
From automated recommendations in LMS platforms to AI-driven skill assessments, it truly is shaping how we build learning platforms.
And now, in 2026, the focus is shifting from generic automation to AI agents: intelligent, conversational partners that actively support individual learning journeys.
Unlike traditional chatbots, AI agents are dynamic and context-aware.
They don’t just deliver information; they understand a learner’s goals, track progress across tools, and even adapt learning paths in real time.
Imagine a learning companion that knows your role, recalls what you’ve mastered, suggests relevant discussions in your internal community, and prompts you to apply new knowledge in live projects.
For L&D teams, AI agents represent a new layer of scalability and personalisation. They could bridge the gap between structured learning programs and informal, day-to-day learning moments.
Transparency, data privacy, and human oversight will continue to be central to how AI agents are designed and integrated.
Rather than slowing innovation, any safeguards will likely help build trust and accountability, ensuring AI becomes a sustainable, human-centered force within L&D.
6. The future of skills looks dim?
Over the past few years, “skills” have been the buzzword dominating learning and talent conversations.
Skills clouds, skills taxonomies, skills-first hiring — the idea was that everything from development to mobility would become skills-led.
But as we move into 2026, the hype has cooled, and a more grounded reality is emerging.
Michael Wright, COO at BuildEmpire had this to say on it: “Many organisations discovered that building a truly skills-based ecosystem is harder than it sounds.
“It requires clean data, consistent frameworks, and the time to map roles, competencies, and learning content — something few teams have the capacity to do well. The vision of agile, skills-driven organisations hasn’t disappeared, but it’s clear that most teams were too ambitious, too soon.
Even the language is evolving. Platforms like Totara have shifted from using “competencies” to “skills,” signalling a mindset change — but the real shift will only happen when skills stop being a standalone initiative and start being woven into everyday workflows.
For now, many organisations are taking a “skills-lite” approach: using skills data to inform learning paths or nudge development conversations, rather than trying to overhaul their entire people infrastructure overnight.”
So, what does it mean?
Well, the future of skills isn’t dim, it’s just maturing.
The next phase will be less about taxonomy-building and more about utility: making skills data useful in the moment, for the manager who’s coaching, the learner who’s exploring, or the system that’s recommending next steps.
In 2026, success won’t belong to the organisations with the biggest skills maps, but to those who can make skills intelligence simple, visible, and actionable.
7. Mobile-ready frontline learning
For all the talk about digital transformation, many frontline and deskless workers are still left behind when it comes to learning.
In sectors like retail, logistics, healthcare, and manufacturing, employees are often expected to figure it out on the job.
But the issue is that they often have limited access to training tools that actually fit the flow of their work.
The result? Uneven performance, inconsistent customer experiences, and avoidable errors.
In 2026, that gap is closing fast.
Mobile-ready frontline learning is emerging as a defining trend; bringing learning and support directly to the devices people already use on the job.
The focus isn’t on lengthy modules or static courses, but on short, contextual help that appears when and where it’s needed most.
Think of it as microlearning with purpose: guidance that loads in seconds, works on shared or personal devices, and gets someone back to their task without breaking the workflow.
Whether it’s a quick video on how to operate new equipment, a safety checklist embedded in a QR code, or an AI-powered coach that answers questions on-the-go learning is becoming an invisible but constant layer of everyday work.
For L&D leaders, this shift means designing “on-the-ground enablement” rather than one-size-fits-all programs.
8. The role of roleplay in learning
One of the most powerful ways to learn isn’t by reading or watching, it’s by doing.
In 2026, that principle is being reimagined through digital roleplay: technology-driven simulations that let people safely practice high-stakes conversations, decision-making, and problem-solving before they ever face them in real life.
Where traditional eLearning delivers knowledge, roleplay delivers readiness.
Through tools powered by AI, virtual reality, or adaptive branching scenarios, learners can step into realistic situations:
- Giving feedback to a team member
- Handling a customer complaint
- Navigating a compliance challenge
And after, they can receive immediate, contextual feedback. It’s experiential learning without the risk.
This approach isn’t limited to leadership or customer service training.
Organisations are now using AI-driven roleplay to build empathy, improve communication, and strengthen psychological safety across teams.
For L&D leaders, this means rethinking content creation. Instead of static modules, the future of learning design looks more like scenario architecture: building branching storylines, dialogue flows, and AI personas that reflect the nuances of real work.
When people can rehearse before it matters, learning becomes stickier, safer, and more human.
9. A refocus on leadership
If there’s one thing every L&D leader agrees on heading into 2026, it’s this: leadership is the linchpin of performance.
A modern manager isn’t just a task supervisor, they’re the frontline enabler for growth.
So, as learning becomes community-driven, AI supported and more in the flow of work, leadership development becomes more essential to glue it all together.
Modern L&D teams are moving away from bulky leadership programs and toward micro-interventions like:
- Short scripts for career conversations
- Ten-minute prompts for one-to-ones
- Simple review loops tied to real work
- Nudges built right into the tools managers already use
- Metrics that track behaviours, not just completions
Wrapping up
2026 is shaping up to be a year where learning and development moves from theoretical initiatives to practical, human-centered action.
From community-led learning that puts learners at the center, to AI agents that personalize development in real time, to mobile-ready solutions for deskless workers, L&D is becoming more responsive, embedded, and meaningful than ever before.
There really is one common thread across all these trends… Learning that meets people where they are, is aligned to real work, and is supported by smart, ethical technology.
Organisations that can embrace these principles will not only build stronger capabilities but also foster cultures where learning sticks, performance improves, and people thrive.
In short, 2026 isn’t just about fancy, new tools or platforms. Instead, it’s about smarter, more human ways to learn, grow, and lead.
And the organisations that do that well will define the next era of work.
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