Hot Tech Thought-Leadership Topics in 2026
Over the past few months, we have been interviewing our Collectivist agency members to gather their thoughts and insights on what might change in the PR and marketing world during 2026. Here, Mike, Rahme, Simon, Louay, and Ricardo look at the tech thought-leadership topics in 2026 predicting a greater focus on automotive, smart transportation and smart cities but balanced against a need for greater care of the planet, conservation and sustainability. Ricardo has his eyes set on the Football World Cup!
Ricardo Schell, Noizze Media (Spain and Portugal) “Sports will be very interesting this year with the World Cup. I like writing about technology and sports, and I think that’s where investment will go. Technology in sports is changing everything, from training and methodologies to health and athlete tracking, smart stadiums, and more. Many Spanish teams have innovation hubs and are partnering with tech startups.”
Rahme Mehmet, TechComms (UK) sees an increasing focus on security issues: “Security is a core topic and will continue next year. Compliance and governance are also key themes. Fraud is another major topic among our clients.”
Simon Vericel, Influence Matters (China, Indonesia, China and Taiwan):
“Automotive is the big focus right now for any foreign technology supplier. Whether it’s semiconductors, materials, chemicals, aluminium shaping—everyone is targeting the Chinese EV manufacturers. More broadly, China is still developing as a global economy, especially in Southeast Asia. Chinese companies are expanding and looking for service suppliers – HR, accounting, payment systems, fintech, ad tech, etc.”
Louay al Samarrai, Active DMC (Middle-East):
“From a technology perspective, it will be all about energy, data centers, Large Language Models, and their power consumption. Conservation and climate change will be part of the discussion. For instance, in Turkey, they’ve created a “green” data center, which is likely to become a trend. We’ll also continue discussing smart cities and smart transportation. For example, in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and parts of Saudi Arabia, driverless cars are becoming more common, and AI is increasingly shaping transport systems.
Mike Sottak, Wired Island (US) agrees on the conservation and sustainability trend:
“Two big trends we see – one that evolves AI to a new level – is physical AI. How does AI interact with the real world? Not just prompting it for research, but real-world interactions that help us navigate physical environments more efficiently and safely.
The second big topic is sustainability. All this AI consumes huge amounts of power and water. It’s an environmental drain. On the macro level, there’s global warming and increased energy demand. On the personal level, your electricity bill might double because a new data center opened nearby.”
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