Five policy management and compliance trends for 2026

The workplace and wider business environment never stand still. There are always emerging risks and new regulations to consider. AI is starting to influence working processes. And on top of this, there is a highly unpredictable geo-political climate.

So, what does 2026 hold for compliance professionals and policy management teams? When we looked at the compliance and policy management predictions for 2025 we predicted that it would be a “volatile” year. Given the continuing propensity for change in what was already a highly complex world, policy management and compliance teams face an interesting and potentially equally challenging 2026.

If you’re planning your strategy for 2026 or working out your priorities it is worth considering some of the trends that may occur. So, for another year, we’re getting out the Xoralia crystal ball, giving it a quick polish, and predicting some of the trends in the compliance, governance, and policy management space that we’re likely to see in the coming months.

Here’s our top five policy management and compliance predictions for 2026.

Busy compliance teams will feel stretched

The world of compliance can be highly complex with an ever-evolving regulatory landscape occurring across different jurisdictions, industries, and organisational areas. Keeping up isn’t always easy.; in 2025, a survey of compliance professionals found that  “regulatory changes” was the most commonly mentioned ”top challenge”.

Meanwhile PWC’s Global Compliance Survey for 2025 reported that 85% of senior compliance and governance leaders believe that compliance requirements have got more complex in the past three years. Similarly, according to research from Regology, 92% of compliance professionals report that their job has got more difficult, while 44% struggle to keep up with regulatory changes.

In 2026 compliance doesn’t look like it will be slowing down or getting any easier. We think this will continue to present challenges for compliance teams, who have the potential to feel increasingly stretched though the year. The research from Regology suggests that part of the problem may be an over-reliance on traditional, manual compliance processes which can be inefficient and lead to errors; over three quarters (77%) or organisations report compliance processes that are still manual.

AI embeds into governance, compliance, and policy management solutions

In our 2025 predictions, we suggested that AI would start to influence compliance and policy management solutions. In 2026, AI will be increasingly embedded into solutions through new features and capabilities, as well as other platforms such as Microsoft 365 which are used in policy management creation and related lifecycle management.

We think most compliance teams will welcome this. Research from Regology suggests that 71% of compliance professionals are “enthusiastic” about AI and the market is responding to this opportunity. At the same time, these being compliance people they are naturally concerned about risks, with 68% worrying about bias in AI-powered governance tools!

Copilot and AI places more emphasis on policy lifecycle management

We’re still very much at the beginning of our collective AI journey and solutions are evolving at breakneck speed, with agentic AI poised to be the next significant wave of change. In this early stage of maturity - and perhaps time of inflated expectations fuelled by vendor marketing hype - the results from AI projects are not guaranteed to be successful. In fact, MIT research suggests that currently 95% of AI projects do not realise their value.

One of the reasons that AI and Copilot projects fail to meet their expectations is not always down to the AI, but that the foundations are not in place to set them up for success. One fundamental precondition for getting meaningful and accurate answers for employees out of Copilot and AI-powered bots is to have authoritative and up-to-date content. If the AI reads a policy or document that is out of date, it will give an erroneous answer.

We’re already finding that AI projects and Microsoft Copilot are placing more attention on the importance of document lifecycle management and - in particular - policy lifecycle management to ensure there are accurate documents to set organisations up for AI success. In 2026 we think AI projects will spotlight the importance of content governance for policies, so they are always current and accurate.

Cybersecurity and data privacy remains the main compliance priority

Last year we identified cyber-risk and associated data privacy challenges as the major specific concern for compliance professionals. In 2026 we think this will still be the case as cybersecurity attacks and data breaches continue to regularly make the news.

The PwC survey of compliance leaders already mentioned, identified the joint top two compliance priorities as “Cybersecurity” (51%) and “Data protection and privacy” (51%); in comparison, compliance related to AI was only mentioned by 26% of respondents.

Moreover, Research from NAVEX carried out in 2025 also found that a “privacy / cybersecurity breach” was the most commonly reported type of compliance incident to occur in the past three years, mentioned by 28% of organisations.  “Data privacy” (62%) and “Cybersecurity” (60%) were also the second and third most mentioned areas when compliance professionals were asked about the areas where training will be required over the next couple of years.

The policy management software market continues to grow

As the regulatory environment grows more complex and the policy management software market continues to mature, 2026 looks set to be another strong year for policy management solutions.

Multiple research houses forecast significant growth in the policy management software market - Imarc Group suggests a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 9.87% up to 2033, while  Market Growth Reports is even more bullish with a CAGR of 18.48% to the same year. They also report that 68% of large enterprises are using dedicated policy management solutions.

In 2026 we think more and more businesses will opt to adopt policy management software, in a market where there is both significant choice and obvious value. Of these, solutions that incorporate SharePoint for policy management will make sense. For example, nearly 80% of Fortune 500 companies already use SharePoint for document management, and aligning software for document management and policy management is a logical step.

Policy management in 2026

2026 will be a busy year for compliance professionals and their contribution in a complex, unpredictable and litigious world will be more important than ever. A policy management solution like Xoralia can help ease some of the pressure on teams by automating time-consuming manual tasks, helping organisations to be audit-ready and meeting the compliance challenges of 2026 head on. Why not organise a free demo to see how it can help you?