A lot has happened since the launch of ChatGPT, a product that surprised insiders and outsiders on November 30, 2022 and changed the history of the internet forever. Even though some time has passed, even today we still have to point again to generative artificial intelligence (AI) as a trend for 2026. The reason is that its applications and implications are so many and so far reaching that they keep surprising us every year, which makes it impossible for it to drop off the list of predictions and trends for 2026.
AI is king
Therefore, the boom in AI applied to journalism and to CMS and DXP will continue, although its focus will be on new initiatives. Even though in Spain we are always behind, I hope that in 2026 AI will not be used so much to save time and gain efficiency, but to generate more and better content, raise quality and generate more and better multimedia content.
Likewise, a broader mainstreaming of agentic AI is expected (AI agents that perform tasks autonomously), along with much deeper CMS automation and stronger connections between systems through the MCP protocol (so called agentic orchestration).
As AI chatbots advance, SEO professionals (who are nothing more than growth hackers specialized in getting traffic from Google) are expected to put more of their energy into these other products, which will likely give rise to new content formats specialized for them. Perhaps we will start hearing about GEO content.
Truth and credibility are essential in journalism. AI is expected, although with improved and reinforced safety controls, to act as a security and protection layer in this regard, like a kind of information checker. In a very near future, CMS platforms should have their AI systems reinforced to avoid making mistakes or hallucinations, above all by double checking everything multiple times and answering that it does not know something when it does not have a reliable source to rely on.
Good health is based on healthy diversity of revenue sources. If your newspaper depends too much on a single revenue source and it is also tied to Google or a similar big tech company, then you have a huge problem, because these companies do not care about journalism or newspapers, only about generating more profits in a world on fire. In this case the CMS must have an AI powered paywall built in and support the rest of the revenue sources, whether events, ecommerce and so on.
Another major trend for 2026 is governance around AI bots. When AI chatbots arrived, at CMS MAG we recommended blocking first and thinking later. We have already reflected a lot on this and the truth is that now we must have a solid system to control which bots access which information and allow or block it depending on our agreements or preferences. There are already strong options and initiatives in the market that can connect to the CMS and it also would not hurt for CMS platforms themselves to build this into their core to protect content.
Related to AI, another market trend should be to recover the entire content and data archive and bring it up to date. The major deals with generative AI companies have happened with outlets and groups that have great credibility and also a large archive. In this way and given that generative AI needs massive amounts of data, resurfacing all that old content that was left out in the last migration can now be a very good idea.
Also related to the above, media outlets should already be experimenting with their own AI models, preferably using an open source model to keep control and make their own content privately available to their own reporters. On the other hand, some AI deals with big tech companies also involve creating chatbots aimed at users, at readers, as may be the case with El País (Spain).
AI in general and specifically agentic AI can be a great help to improve the taxonomy of your digital newspaper. With all content perfectly categorized, the CMS can do truly fantastic things and I am not only referring to having sections and categories well organized. This means more relevant related stories, a more fine tuned search experience and a long list of other improvements.
Continuing with AI, many newspapers are already converting text into audio and video both for their own sites and for social media, but this still has to advance a lot and it is something where we will see many improvements in 2026.
To wrap up the CMS topic, in 2026 chats inside the CMS itself will likely start to become mainstream, allowing not only content generation but also page creation, field additions and different actions through direct natural language communication with the CMS or DXP. You will not need deep knowledge of the CMS to operate it, it will be enough to state it in the chat and the magic will happen.
Influencer journalists
With the maturity of the internet and the mainstreaming of platforms like YouTube, Substack or TikTok, many content creators have made fortunes with fresh natural content and they also have, interestingly, more credibility than many newspapers according to some studies.
For years, the world of influencers and journalism has been like oil and water, they did not mix well. Perhaps this will begin to change in 2026, supported by Google decisions and by some examples of recognized prestigious journalists who no longer have jobs in traditional journalism and are also making fortunes on internet platforms and social networks.
It was always important for a newspaper that a journalist had a name and a strong number of followers on social media, but this could take another turn toward one person newsroom journalists who, thanks to certain social networks and specialized CMS platforms, could build their own highly credible media outlets with barely any investment and great upside if they create content well adapted to the medium. A good example of this might be David Jiménez, the director and there are other examples in sports media like Siro López, Nico Abad and so on.
In this case there are specialized CMS platforms designed to support these kinds of initiatives. They tend to be simple CMS platforms that place a strong focus on the newsletter and monetization and in some cases they are also set up like a kind of social network. In this case it is recommended to use open source platforms like Ghost, because when the content creator does not control the platform where they publish, it is usually the platform that controls and shapes them over time.
The year of community and loyalty
In an environment where content is infinite thanks to AI and advertising returns fall in inverse proportion, mass advertising is ceasing to be a good business. In addition, we have to add the traditional tolls that media outlets must pay to run many advertising campaigns and that directly attack their most basic principles.
In this environment, also affected by Google’s decision to add AI to all products and drastically reduce the traffic they send to information sources on the open web, a paradigm shift is taking hold. Media outlets must stop trying to kill flies with cannons, stop competing to get unique users, the so called parachutists who drop in from big tech, visit the newspaper and go back where they came from without even noticing the specific outlet they visited.
A new way of working is taking hold that prioritizes brand, loyalty, engagement, first party data and ultimately independence from advertising and big tech. What they give you one day, they take away later with no explanation. There are countless examples of newspapers and publications that shut down after the social network of the moment turned its back on them.
On the one hand, the industry must keep going deeper into a metric that puts even more emphasis on loyalty and less on unique users, a path that already started with GfK DAM measuring average daily audience, but that must culminate in a new metric that combines unique users with loyalty, a metric that better reflects quality and less quantity.
The CMS, in turn, must enable, as we saw, different revenue streams and, on the other hand, foster loyalty with personalized optimized content based on browsing behavior, to give one example.
Therefore, it should be the year when newspapers stop trying to be so massive and focus on connecting with the audience that can truly support their costs. Connecting with them will be key and offline events can be the key: symposiums, awards, clubs and so on.
The year of trials and courtrooms
The year 2026 will be a busy year in the courts. Google will keep abusing its dominant position and different jurisdictions will try to rein it in, likely without success. When we say Google we also mean the rest of big tech, like Meta, recently convicted in Spain for knowingly profiting from fraudulent ads for years.
Generative AI needs data at massive scale and the only way to get it quickly at the best price is to access it by bypassing copyright and legality. Therefore, those rights will continue to be defended in 2026 before the courts. How this is shaped will determine the internet of the future.
The year of open source’s comeback?
Some claim that 2026 will be the year when journalism looks back to collaboration and open source, given that things have not been going very well with private platforms. In this sense, it may be more than feasible for journalism to return to open source, to open fair software development that is more respectful of privacy.
The idea behind this trend is that newsrooms report the news, but in general they are not places especially suited to technological development. In that regard, perhaps the best approach would be to collaborate more than compete, developing open source technologies that at least at their core serve everyone.
The year to bet on greater technical complexity
Technology is advancing in giant leaps while in newsrooms time seems to pass much more slowly. To a large extent, digital newspapers are still published with in house systems or third party systems that are very outdated and insecure, with monolithic setups and highly fragmented information, as well as multiple platforms to manage different kinds of content, especially multimedia.
2026 must be the year when, despite everything, newspapers have to take the bull by the horns and bet on more complex architectures like headless and on modular composable systems to properly cover audience needs. Needless to say, these systems must also be fully up to date in terms of AI integration and connections through APIs and the modern MCP.
Real time collaboration
Many modern CMS platforms already have real time collaboration, even if only in their live coverage or minute by minute systems. It seems this feature will reach every corner of the CMS, especially in the case of WordPress, which has set it as a top priority for 2026 and as a step before adding a new multilingual system that could place this veteran CMS at the forefront not only for blogs and small newspapers, but also for much more ambitious enterprise initiatives.
Other aspects that never go out of style
Structured data should once again be a priority in 2026. Making it as easy as possible for the bots we care about to read and understand texts is vital.
Security must continue to be an obsession always, it should never go out of style.
* Original article written in Spanish, translated with AI and reviewed in English by Jorge Mediavilla.
