In 2025, the ServiceNow ecosystem proved it could talk about AI. Now, 2026 is shaping up to be the year it must prove it can execute.
Across analysts, partners, and ServiceNow itself, there is striking alignment on what comes next. The platform is pushing beyond its ITSM roots, AI is moving from experimentation to scale, and customers are far less patient with long transformation cycles that promise value “eventually”. What’s emerging is not just a new set of features, but a new operating expectation for how work gets designed, governed, and delivered.
Here we draw on perspectives from across the ecosystem to discover the five things ServiceNow professionals should expect in 2026 – and why they matter.
1. AI Stops Being a Capability and Becomes the Operating Model
For all the excitement around AI over the last two years, much of it has lived in pilots, proofs of concept, and isolated use cases. That phase is ending.
Steven Dickens, CEO and principal analyst at HyperFRAME Research, sees AI as both the biggest opportunity and the biggest test of ServiceNow’s long-term strategy.
“The company is on a multi-year mission to break out of its traditional and highly successful ITSM legacy,” he noted. “It’s made good progress, but building other business flows has proven hard. Whether AI disrupts that challenge is the crucial indicator for the long-term success of the business.”
For Dickens, the stakes are clear. AI doesn’t just accelerate existing workflows – it potentially reshapes where value sits in the enterprise.
“AI is the ball game in 2025 and for the next couple of years. While it has the potential to challenge the core business, it’s also a huge accelerant for growth. If ServiceNow positions its agentic story at the nexus of enterprise streamlining, it can move beyond ITSM and become foundational to the next, AI-powered stage of operations,” he said.
From inside ServiceNow, that transition away from experimentation is already visible. Matthew Higham, technology and digital officer UK at ServiceNow, said customers are finally catching their breath after the initial agentic AI surge.
“Agentic just seemed to come out of nowhere, and then suddenly it was everywhere. A lot of customers were running lots of proofs of concept, but very few were actually getting into scale and releasing the value they hoped for,” Higham told NowBen.
What’s changed, he said, is mindset, he added. “We’re coming out of that curve of disillusionment now. Customers are realising they need a proper platform approach – somewhere to control where business logic is executed, and to govern it properly. Agents are the monetization engine for all the investment in AI. They’re the only thing that actually executes work on your behalf.”
For Higham, 2026 is when that execution finally shows up in results. “This is when you see the hockey stick. Boards now understand what AI is, what the value is, and how it eradicates waste. The next step is scaling it properly.”
2. ServiceNow’s Break From ITSM Becomes Real – Voice Plays a Key Role
Breaking out of ITSM has been part of ServiceNow’s narrative for years. In 2026, the ecosystem expects it to become far more tangible, particularly in customer-facing domains. Dickens argues that AI may finally be the lever that makes this expansion stick.
“Building non-IT business flows has always been hard. AI has the potential to change that by reimagining how workflows are designed in the first place, rather than simply extending ITSM patterns into other functions.”
One of the clearest signals of that shift is happening in the contact center. In late 2025, technology partner 3CLogic announced a new wave of AI voice-enabled customer service capabilities built natively with ServiceNow, bringing voice interactions directly into the Now Platform. The announcement points to a future where real-time transcription, sentiment analysis, AI voice agents, and contextual call transfers are no longer bolt-ons, but workflow triggers across CRM, IT, and HR.
Guillaume Seynhaeve, 3CLogic’s VP of alliances and marketing, sees voice as the missing connective layer between front and back office.
“Voice has always been a critical service channel, but AI is amplifying its value,” he said. “In 2026, Voice AI is poised to become the primary support interface within the ServiceNow ecosystem – linking front-office conversations directly with back-office processes across IT, HR, and an expanding set of CRM capabilities.”
The emphasis on voice was signalled by Adam Spearing, ServiceNow’s EMEA head of AI innovation, when explaining the importance of multimodality, where users can interact with work through AI, using text, voice, images, or agents instead of clicking through traditional apps.
“Voice is going to become a pretty important interface for us,” he said. “The beauty of voice, it’s very easy. It also helps a lot of people to be able to get at what they want to get at.”
For ServiceNow professionals, this marks a shift from thinking in tickets and cases to thinking in conversations, signals, and outcomes – all governed through a single platform.
3. Platform Consolidation Accelerates – and Architecture Becomes the Differentiator
If AI is the execution engine of 2026, consolidation is the structural backdrop. Sukhi Gill, CTO of ServiceNow Elite Partner Calitii, a Synechron company, sees consolidation as both inevitable and overdue.
“Enterprises are tired of tool sprawl,” he told NowBen. “CIOs want fewer platforms, not more. ServiceNow is increasingly positioned to become the central nervous system and connecting tissue of enterprise operations.”
Gill expects 2026 to bring a sharp acceleration in platform-level decisions, including:
- Migration of legacy ITSM tools.
- Consolidation of HR, finance, procurement, and security workflows.
- Broader uptake of industry-specific solutions.
- A push toward a single data model, workflow engine, and experience layer.
“This creates massive demand for people who can design cross-departmental workflows, not just configure modules,” he said. “Architecture becomes the value.”
4. Agentic AI Forces Governance to the Forefront
The speed at which agentic AI has spread has exposed a hard truth: scale without governance doesn’t deliver value. ServiceNow’s Higham said many early adopters discovered this the hard way.
“We saw a proliferation of agentic systems across different use cases, but very few actually got into production at scale. That’s when customers realised they needed a governance layer – not just more agents,” he said.
That governance spans everything from data access and execution rights to organizational design itself, he added.
“Customers are fundamentally rethinking how processes work, how teams are structured, and where accountability sits. That’s not a technology problem – it’s an operating-model problem.”
Meanwhile, Gill sees the same dynamic playing out in low-code and citizen development. “2026 will be the year organizations finally trust low-code – but only with guardrails. Governed citizen development programmes will become standard.”
The winners, he argues, will be those who enable speed without chaos.
5. Time-To-Value Becomes Non-Negotiable
Perhaps the strongest consensus across the ecosystem is around delivery expectations.
“Gone are the days of 18-month implementations,” explained Gill. “ServiceNow’s own push towards ‘value acceleration’ will force partners and internal teams to rethink delivery models.”
In 2026, customers will expect pre-built solutions, rapid deployment frameworks, AI-assisted configuration, and continuous improvement models rather than big-bang go-lives. That pressure is coming directly from the boardroom, where patience for transformation programs without measurable returns has worn thin.
Higham sees this as the natural consequence of AI maturity. “Leadership has moved from asking ‘what is AI?’ to ‘how does it eradicate waste and drive growth?’ Now it’s about releasing the value they thought they were going to get back in 2024 and 2025.”
For partners and internal teams alike, delivery models will need to change – fast.
Final Thoughts
Across every voice in the ecosystem, the message is consistent. AI, consolidation, and agentic workflows are no longer theoretical. They are reshaping expectations of how ServiceNow is used, how it is governed, and how quickly it must deliver value.
Summing up, Gill said: “If 2025 was the year of experimentation, 2026 will be the year of execution.”