At Canto we love a deep-dive into the world of content, so in our latest Content Rewind webinar we’ve recapped the top trends of 2025 and forecast what’s here to stay in 2026 – trust us, you won’t want to miss the real gem at the end. Let’s get straight into it.

Content Explosion

Demand for content just keeps on rising. In the past year, around 77% of content and creative teams have seen their content volumes grow, according to Canto’s State of Digital Content report.

Naturally, this demand for content can create pressure for marketers to hit ever-higher targets and manage ever-more channels. The good news? It seems budgets are on the up too, with around 80% of businesses planning to increase their content and creative budgets this year. That’s a big jump of 10% compared to 70% this time last year – suggesting businesses are really seeing the value in content.

Tech Stack Complexity

It’s not just content creation which is growing exponentially – the number of tools marketers have in their toolbox are on the up too. 

“Content tech ecosystems are becoming increasingly more complex, and marketers are using more tools on average. Some are using six or more tools just to manage their content,” explains Lynn Herman, Canto’s ABM Marketing Manager, in the Content Rewind webinar.

This trend isn’t necessarily good news: sometimes the more ‘solutions’ you add, the more problems you cause. Lynn adds that “demand is on the rise, but systems and workflows really haven't kept up.”

More Automated, Less Manual

Thankfully, one of the top trends continuing into 2026 will be further automation of processes, helping marketers work smarter, not harder. But while many marketers have already streamlined parts of their content creation or reporting, in areas like content distribution they’ve only scratched the surface, according to Ivy Croteau, Content Marketing Specialist at Canto. 

“For me, it’s distribution that’s the sneaky one,” says Ivy. “You're at the finish line, the content is created, but then you reach this do-or-die moment where you're setting this content free into the world. There's still a lot of manual lift involved in getting that content out and into the hands of your audience. I'm very excited to see how we can reduce the manual lift.” This might be a good time to find out how a digital asset management (DAM) solution not only accelerates content creation but also distributes your content straight to your e-commerce sites, socials and more.

Intentionality With AI

Of course, the top trend dominating the marketing landscape for the past three years has been AI. As we go into 2026, the trend-watchers at Canto predict a shift towards “intentionality with AI”. What does this mean exactly? 

Firstly, it means that AI has a massive role to play in 2026 and beyond. In fact, Canto’s research found that top performing teams are twice as likely to use AI for tagging, metadata, and content creation than their peers. But, as a few of this year’s trends have touched on, more doesn’t necessarily mean better.

Canto’s Ivy Croteau explains: “It's about intentionality with where you're going to implement AI and automation. For the past few years, it's really felt like more tools was the answer. I think that moving into 2026, we're realising more tools is not the answer. It's the right tools. The tools that communicate with each other, that create a harmonious stack, that optimise the entire lifecycle end-to-end.”

Trust and Authenticity

For our final trend for 2026 we promised you a gem, and here is it: this year’s winning brands will be authentic and earn trust. For your content, this means being consistent and reliable across every channel and touchpoint, and showing you care about each customer through content that resonates with them.

Lynn Hermann from Canto explains that “consumers are expecting personalisation. They want to know that what you're providing is relevant for them and how they can use it in their day-to-day. So we're seeing user-generated content and community marketing still on the rise. They’re not going anywhere, because they build trust and authenticity.”

So – whatever 2026 has in store for your creative and content teams, you could do a lot worse than partnering up with the world’s leading DAM platform Canto.

Canto is the intelligent content hub for more than 4,000 modern brands, unifying brand and product content in one centralised platform and accelerating the content lifecycle with AI. Watch Canto’s free Content Rewind webinar.