The PR Trends Shaping 2026
Written by Mariela Azcuy
TL;DR: What’s Next for the Future of PR?
Editing, taste, and objectivity have become quality control for every comms team.
Personal brands go mainstream — moving beyond brand founders and executives, to employees, and even comms pros themselves.
Expect to be working with more freelancers in the coming years.
Sustainable PR means showing up repeatedly in potentially smaller, credible spaces and not chasing one-off headlines.
PR, marketing, and sales are converging around measurable impact, shared language, and storytelling that drives pipeline.
My husband and I have been having a lot of discussions about what life will be like for our elementary-age kids in a decade or even five years. Spoiler alert: We can’t imagine it. So I'm glad this predictions blog isn’t about that. (If you have any theories, let’s talk.)
Even looking a year ahead feels tricky. Staying up to speed on the pace of change and its impact on how we work has become a side hustle. Add in the collective whiplash as everyone tries to figure out where AI will actually land, and it’s no wonder most of us are making educated guesses.
🔁 Whiplash 1: Website personalization is here. Wait, actually, websites are dead and we’re all going to communicate through chat interfaces now.
🔁 Whiplash 2: Reddit is a leader of AI citations. Just kidding: it’s not, because Google limited how much of Reddit (and the rest of the web) its search results show.
🔁 Whiplash 3: SEO is dead. But maybe it didn’t get the memo, because the machines still need something to read.
Sound familiar? We’re all spinning, but in the air beneath us, a few clear throughlines are taking shape. They’re not predictions so much as the PR trends that show where communications is already evolving. If you are asking yourself what is the future of public relations in 2026, this will give you a headstart.
PR Trends 2026
Editing, taste, and objectivity are more important than ever.
With the rise of AI in PR and journalism, many predicted that writer jobs would be the first to go and, in a lot of cases, they were right. Newsrooms have been decimated, publications folded into each other, and some outlets even boldly added AI bylines, which left everyone a little uneasy.
But what few expected was how much more valuable good writers and editors would become once content became ubiquitous. Because ubiquitous doesn’t mean good; it just means there’s more. “AI slop” became everyone’s favorite insult, and we didn’t even need to look up what it meant (I’m looking at you, 6-7).
As AI in PR accelerates, it will lead to an almost desperate need to know that a human was in the loop on any given project. We all need thought partners with taste, and the elements of “taste” are becoming less subjective. It’s about:
The what: Recognizing when an idea doesn’t feel rehashed. There is something new and special about what’s being communicated. This will require surrounding ourselves with people who know where and how to look for quality content and information, and having ways to synthesize what matters to connect the dots. It’s not enough to sign up for dozens of newsletters and let your inbox turn into an unread junkyard.
Technology can be a big help here. (This conversation between Sublime’s Alex Dubrenko and the research mind behind Rick Rubin and others, Billy Oppenheimer, is a great read on this.)
The who: Knowing exactly who benefits from the idea and how. That could mean everything from the content making them laugh to helping them be a better Little League coach. In our case, reporters are an obvious target.
“If every PR person caves to the AI-written pitch, then inboxes will be chock full of the same verbiage and emails will go unopened. So the relationship you have built over all these years will go down the drain, resulting in less coverage over time. The PR teams that win going forward will maintain their own story voice and use AI for trend verification and other research.” – Carver Amy Friedland
The how: Understanding when something has real character and voice – when it stands out from the AI sameness. That takes pattern recognition, curiosity, and the confidence to slow down until you find a better angle. It also means being ruthlessly critical of your LLM partner. If it agrees with every idea or pivot you propose, you’re working with a yes-bot, not a thought partner.
Communications pros will need to apply taste and objectivity constantly – especially when so much AI-generated content is sent our way by colleagues or clients for publishing or pitching purposes. I've noticed that many clients are chasing the speed of AI and becoming lax about what they share and deliver to their PR partners. I call it the "AI Tug of War."
Agency drafts something → Client feeds it to AI and delivers a rewritten version that’s repetitive, rife with all the patterns, and/or doesn’t meet editorial guidelines → Agency pushes back and asks what specifically needs changing from the original → The change is actually minimal and much easier to do manually
Let’s stop the madness! Human editing, taste, and objectivity are now quality control for the entire communications function.
Personal branding expands.
Personal branding used to be shorthand for founders sharing their behind-the-scenes stories and thinking consistently. Look no further than Dave Gerhardt’s book Founder Brand for the proof.
What began in the startup and SaaS world has quietly crept into every corner of business communication. One of the clearest PR trends we’re seeing is mature companies realizing that audiences connect with people instead of institutions. But that only works if they loosen their grip on corporate bureaucracy. Endless review rounds, message policing, and rigid guidelines about what can or can’t be said don’t play well.
In 2026, the need and desire for authentic, human visibility will expand in all directions and we’ll see the impacts:
Employees will continue to become unofficial spokespeople, shaping perception with every LinkedIn post or comment. For brands, this means finding ways to support rather than stifle enthusiasm. Nothing kills corporate culture faster than a muzzle. (I once had to back out of a high-school career panel because only certain people were allowed to represent the company publicly. 😳)
LinkedIn used to be a quick gut check before hiring someone. Are they “with it” enough to have a feed? Does it read okay? Does their experience line up with the resume they shared? Now, a person’s LinkedIn presence can land them in the pro or con column. How many followers do they have vs. other candidates? Does their content show off what it’d be like to work with them in some way? Do they have the potential to be an employee ambassador and inspire others to do the same?
Communications professionals — who have long operated in the shadows — are realizing that their own voices carry weight. The rise of agency leaders, account execs, and in-house professionals with strong followings and public POVs is changing how the industry markets itself. We’ll see more and more peers trying to break out but it won’t be easy. For comms pros, the challenge will be carving out the space to have a voice, not just manage one.
Journalists continue to build individual audiences through newsletters and social media. Their personal brands now compete with, and often outlast, the publications themselves. This raises many questions, one being: what happens to an outlet when it loses a star personality? We have at least one example of that when the “TikTok Guy” left The Washington Post.
It’s no coincidence that this shift parallels the freelancer boom. When everyone is, in some way, an independent creator, visibility becomes currency. Journalists need name recognition to land assignments and to protect themselves as traditional media continues to be disrupted.
We’ll be working with more freelancers next year.
If the past few years hollowed out newsrooms, 2026 will make it official: freelancers will start to outnumber staff journalists across many major business and trade beats. A growing number of writers are becoming independent out of necessity or because it gives them control, flexibility, and multiple revenue streams.
For communicators, this means our media relationships are about to get more fluid and personal. The freelancer economy will reward those who think relationally, and these are some of the impacts on our day-to-day work:
The best relationships will compound. As freelancers move between publications, they’ll take their trusted sources with them. Invest in them now and your stories will travel further than your media list ever could.
Outlet flexibility will become a necessity. A freelancer might place an idea in Fast Company this quarter and Fortune the next. If you have a dream outlet, name it but also trust their editorial sense. They’ll know which door is open.
The best PR teams will become story enablers, not just story sources. Because freelancers have to sell their ideas, helping them build a stronger pitch makes you indispensable. Share context, data, quotes, and assets proactively to become the person they call first.
“The rise of independent journalism has changed the whole dynamic. It’s less about pitching a publication and more about partnering with a person who might write for three outlets and run their own newsletter on the side. In 2026, the teams that figure out how to support freelancers will have a real edge.” – Carver Marely Arias
Niche will hold outsize influence.
The rise of LLMs means information is now summarized and scraped in fragments, often without context or proper attribution. As a result, PR’s value won’t lie in chasing one-off headlines that vanish from feeds. It will lie in sustainable visibility, or what we call Sustainable PR, consistent mentions and conversations that keep a brand’s name (and ideas) in circulation long enough for both machines and humans to notice.
“For years, one significant national feature – a TechCrunch story or a morning-show segment – was considered a game changer. Now, brands are realizing that what really drives impact is frequency and relevance. Reaching the right audience multiple times in the right places, often through trade, vertical, or niche outlets, delivers a stronger return than one splashy moment that disappears in 48 hours.” – Carver Scott Goldberg
To achieve that kind of repetition, communicators will have to go where credibility actually forms. That might mean niche trade outlets or podcasts, Substack ecosystems, or Discord groups where professionals share intel before it hits the press.
But brands entering these spaces will face a new test – authenticity. Communities can spot performative participation instantly. In fact, the NY Times’ Nathan Taylor Pemberton even called authenticity a “currency impossible to forfeit.” Dropping in only when there’s something to promote won’t work. It’s about sustained presence and contribution.
“Audiences on every channel are experiencing major fatigue—partly because of AI, partly because of all the content noise. Because of the sheer quantity, and the lack of originality, the way people interact is shifting. They’re consuming more passively and spending more time in smaller, niche spaces like Reddit or Substack. It’ll be interesting to see how marketers, PR pros, and journalists respond to that in the coming year.” – Carver Ashton Mathai
The companies that master this kind of sustainable PR will find themselves shaping perception and training the systems that now define it.
Comms will get closer to other core business functions.
The silos are cracking, and it's because technology is forcing our hand, not because leadership finally figured out how to crack them effectively. (We recently had one client ask us if we could share their company’s origin story with them because they didn’t have a way to access it. 😱)
For years, “integration” was everyone’s favorite platitude, but most teams still operated on parallel tracks: PR owned earned, marketing owned paid, and no one shared analytics. Clients are asking for PR to show it drives key business metrics — but often don’t give comms access to Google Analytics or sales data. That’s about to change.
“Impact is feeling more make-or-break than ever before, and I’m getting the feeling that it’ll only intensify in 2026. Questions like “can you support that PR strategy with data that answers the why” and “how can we anticipate our results to measure and perform against other tier 1 announcements in the landscape” have become routine over the past few months. If we can’t provide some sort of measurable impact, it’s much harder to make client partners and business leaders see the full need for and impact of our work.” – Carver Hailey Pinto
The pressure for measurable impact will force PR to sit closer to sales, marketing, and other functions than ever before. For sales, the shift will be about using storytelling to accelerate trust and shorten buying cycles.
Comms teams that build narratives around customer impact, differentiated thinking, and executive authority will help sales and marketing teams overcome objections before the first call even happens.
The collaboration will start tactically. Beyond media coverage and thought-leadership pieces in enablement decks and nurture campaigns, expect PR teams to open dedicated Slack channels to share upcoming executive LinkedIn posts, allowing sales to build their supporting storylines. We may even see PR teams getting access to Gong to source first-hand stories with a reporter’s hat on. And the metrics will evolve beyond share of voice, toward influenced pipeline and branded search lift.
Content marketing and PR will continue to blur, especially as reports show that they hold the ability to influence a large portion of LLM citations. The smartest organizations will stop debating who “owns” thought leadership or storytelling. Instead, they’ll organize around shared objectives – awareness, engagement, and authority – and distribute through every possible channel, earned or owned.
One very visible way we’ll see these functions merging? The use of shared language. Here’s a true story: I spent the first half of my career at PR agencies and on in-house PR teams. To us, “digital PR” was a distinction we made to refer to media relations when publications went online, but that terminology largely faded away as it became redundant.
After transitioning to B2B marketing, I realized that marketing teams used “digital PR” to mean securing backlinks. Same phrase, two meanings. That sort of language discrepancy leads to confusion, and we’ll see less of it moving forward.
The deeper these disciplines overlap, the more valuable communicators become as connectors. We’ll be the ones to bridge creative, technical, and strategic thinking without losing the story.
The only thing I’m sure of heading into 2026 is that none of us can figure it all out alone. The field is shifting too fast for any one perspective. These are the patterns I’m seeing but I’d love to hear yours. What are you noticing, experimenting with, or rethinking moving into 2026? Drop me an email!