2025 was a year marked by success for many companies, although these successes are easy to overlook as most consider the year’s challenges when building their 2026 roadmaps. Rising costs, shifting market demands, and even geopolitical tensions all contribute to an uncertain environment and put great pressure on project planning and delivery.
To compound this, the term “digital acceleration” is an understatement for the magnitude of change that is being demanded of companies. AI has advanced beyond the testing phase and is set to become essential infrastructure in 2026 that most organisations are competing to understand and implement “before it’s too late.”
A redefined role for project leadership
Thus, while project leaders head into the new year facing challenges due to persistent uncertainty and rapid transformation, technology is reshaping the role of the PMO and demanding greater cross-functional collaboration. In this context, the role of the project manager will expand beyond coordinating tasks. Instead, they must be able to steer initiatives with greater emotional intelligence and more effective leadership.
This will demand new skills such as systems thinking, business agility, lean and an understanding of how to drive productivity through digital integration. This trend is not unique to the project manager’s role and presents something greater to look out for in 2026.
The hidden risk to watch out for
Projects are becoming more complex as technology scales and organisations become more interconnected. This means the human dynamics underpinning projects will grow more fragile and more consequential. Misaligned expectations, eroding trust, and breakdowns in collaboration remain leading causes of project failure. In other words, the complexities of 2026 might not be defined only by the tools we adopt, but rather by the relationships we manage.
This is why our joint research with University College London (UCL) has been so timely. It reveals that 97% of organisations fail to formally and consistently measure the health of their key business relationships, despite nearly all executives acknowledging their importance. This blind spot leaves programmes vulnerable to hidden relational risks that often go unrecorded and unmanaged. We have seen many examples of the adverse results of this in recent and ongoing global projects.
Too many organisations are still focused solely on managing relationships intuitively, without ever truly measuring them. Measurement provides the data and shared perception needed to drive meaningful improvement, unlock hidden value, and reduce avoidable failure.
