The 2026 Agency forecast: Plans and predictions from C&IT’s top agencies
With the end of the year almost upon us, now is the time that most agencies and planners will be turning their thoughts to 2026, and laying out their strategies for the next 12 months - but the sector will have to negotiate a number of challenges over the next year.
As the events industry moves beyond the post-pandemic recovery phase, a new reality is settling in. The scramble to simply "get back to live" has been replaced by a rigorous demand for justification from clients and attendees. Why are we meeting? What is the tangible return? And how can we extract more value from events with the same level of resource?
We spoke to leadership figures from six of the top performers from C&IT’s Top 50 Agencies list—asembl, Planit Live, Seen Presents, Bray Leino Events, BI Worldwide, and Clarity Business Travel—to map out the landscape for 2026.