The cultural horizon: 2026

2025 was an eye-opening, horizon-expanding year for The Audience Agency. Between us, we’ve worked closely with more than 250 organisations, agencies and policymakers, and across 21 countries.

Encouragingly, despite the social and political storms swirling around us, this work has given the team hope about the cultural sector’s capacity to ride the waves of change —and its potential to take the lead in driving its own.

An engine of innovation

Anne Torreggiani – Chief executive

Recent studies are emphatic about the unique potential of artists and cultural organisations to contribute to innovation more widely. Much of this research highlights the need for a collaborative approach, and the value of culture in tech, and tech in culture.

The National Theatre’s Theatre Transformed explores how theatre “could enable the kind of interdisciplinary research and systemic innovation needed to meet this century’s challenges… [and] become a living laboratory”. The Serpentine’s Future Art Ecosystems (FAE) latest briefing frames the arts as an essential space “for societal experimentation with advanced technologies”.

Due for publication in early 2026, our study on inclusive innovation, commissioned by Arts Council England (ACE), finds similar parallels, especially in how the arts are shifting the dial on social innovation. Look out, too, for our review for ACE on the state of touring, which calls for investment in collaborative innovation.

It seems all of us have landed on a clear conclusion: the arts are vital to the problems of the future, and we must work together and trust in our fellow people to face up to the challenges.

Embracing the future with collaborative AI

Stephen Miller – Chief technology officer

If 2025 was the year cultural organisations began experimenting with AI in all its forms, then 2026 will be about taking that learning to the next level, getting data ready and supporting those who are only just starting out on their journey with the technology. The focus will shift from whether to use these technologies to how they can be used ethically to better deliver artistic, social and civic missions.

Over the past year, we have learned successful adoption is not primarily a technical challenge, but a human one. Through initiatives such as Let’s Get Real AI, organisations at very different stages of maturity have explored emotional responses to AI, excitement, anxiety and scepticism, and the importance of creating safe, transparent spaces to experiment, reflect and learn.

The opportunity for 2026 lies in collaboration. AI, especially agentic AI, has the potential to collapse, rather than reinforce existing silos, supporting shared learning, responsible data sharing and clearer understanding of cultural impact. By working together, the sector can ensure these tools are used for tech-for-good and data-for-good outcomes.

Getting our data in order

Alec Ward – Consultant, lead for digital content and skills (and chair of the Museums Computer Group)

At the Museums Computer Group conference this year, we heard a talk from Professor Marjory Da Costa Abreu of Sheffield Hallam University. Marjory spoke about responsible AI use and colonial collections in museums and heritage. But an important part of her talk was the necessity for good data. She argued too many organisations are more concerned about using AI and not concerned enough about the quality of the data they’re feeding it.

AI is a sweeping term, because a lot of different technologies and tools fall into that category. But the point about data stands, no matter the tool or technology. In 2026 it’s going to be important for arts, culture and heritage organisations to get their data in good order.

This isn’t anything new. But the reality now is that these readily accessible tools are hungry for our data on a significant scale. We need to make sure that anything we’re feeding these tools is accurate and representative. The data shapes the quality, accuracy and safety of the outputs from these tools. For cultural and heritage organisations, this matters even more because we steward and support public trust, cultural memory, and community relationships.

Arts and culture leading positive social change

Anra Kennedy – Consultant director

I hope 2026 will be the year when socially engaged arts gain the recognition and influence they deserve, beyond the cultural sector. In a society seemingly beset by turmoil, there are thousands of individuals, groups and organisations working to make people’s lives better. People are supporting and strengthening communities through arts and creativity every day, in ordinary places, right across Europe.

Beneath the umbrella term of ‘socially engaged arts’, the diversity of practice, theme and output is extraordinary. We’re privileged to be working with the Alliance for Socially Engaged Arts, alongside our partners Fondazione Fitzcarraldo and Culture Action Europe, to design and deliver the Alliance’s inaugural fellowship programme.

The fifteen 2025 Fellows encompass that aforementioned diversity of cause and practice. Their energy, authenticity and unequivocal stance on values-led, socially purposeful work encapsulates for me the very definition of radical hope.

The Fellows are in the spotlight right now, but they are only the tip of the iceberg. It’s their peers across the wider socially engaged arts ecosystem, and the work they are all doing, that give me most reason to be hopeful.

Pioneering authentic citizen-led decision-making

Laura Drane – Head of civic engagement

2026 will almost certainly see citizen-led decision-making in culture, like citizens’ assemblies, become more widely adopted. New Art Exchange in Nottingham is already pioneering in this regard, while the National Gallery has also announced its own intention to create a citizens’ jury.

This approach has the potential to lead to transformative, positive change, depending on how it’s undertaken. My key question is always to ask whether the organisation is truly ready for this kind of step.

Young people leading the agenda

Oliver Mantell – Director of evidence and insight

I’m feeling optimistic about the contribution young people can make to cultural organisations next year. With greater take-up of co-creation and citizen juries to support decision-making over the next year, there’s ever more opportunity for young people to shape organisations. We know from our research this could imply shifts in formats, art forms, values and tone of voice, if a younger generation is allowed to assert its preferences for itself.

The median age of the UK population is between 40 and 41. Maybe we can make the clock run backwards and have the median age of those who shape cultural organisations be more than a year younger in a year’s time… I think we would be better for it.

Creative solutions to tackling climate change

Patrick Towell – Director of creative economy

2026 may be the year we realise that we need to do something about climate change, as governments and big business aren’t making too great a job of it. Therein lies an opportunity for our cultural and creative sectors.

What’s required is no less than the biggest culture change since the Industrial Revolution. As we in the cultural sector understand the society in which we work, its people and its culture – and produce work which changes what that culture becomes – maybe we can play a more significant role in this shift.

Global leaders certainly think so. Cultural Power: Narratives for Change is one of the lines of action under the Fostering Human and Social Development axis of the Action Agenda, coming out of COP30 in Belém. As our evaluation of the British Council’s Creative Commission for Climate argues, creativity – not just science, technology and business – will need to power the innovation required to achieve our climate goals over the next 25 years. And applying creativity to turn ideas into something concrete is what we all do every day.

Living in 2026

Ben Jeffries – Head of Scotland

When we look to the future, we tend to think of technology. I think now we are waking up to the fact the pendulum has swung too far. A ‘screen and me’ life is convenient, but it is not enough; it is mediated humanity.

When countries like Australia start banning social media because of its harmful effects on children, they are tacitly acknowledging all this screen time is not good for anyone. As a result, I think many new year’s resolutions in 2026 will be about real-world adventures for the body and spirit, putting more value on coming together to engage and spark off each other as people.

We have already built amazing, dedicated technologies for this that are proven effective as balms for the soul and engines of empathy and shared humanity (and we have the research to prove it). These technologies are our theatres, museums, galleries and concert halls.

Even if 2026 is not the year when everyone completely unplugs and embraces cultural spaces as places where the best of life can really happen, I think it might at least be a turning point. Our job will be to embrace and encourage that trend however we can.