2026 GRC, Ethics & Compliance Guide: Trends You Need to Stay Ahead

In 2025, the balance between risk and reward became materially more consequential. Advances in AI, rising expectations for operational resilience, and intensifying regulatory scrutiny reshaped executive agendas and exposed the limits of reactive risk management. Some organizations adapted quickly, using governance, risk, compliance, ethics, and learning to move faster with confidence. Others struggled to keep pace.

This guide explores what separated those two paths and what it means for 2026.

One of the most significant shifts of the year was the move from AI experimentation to enterprise deployment. As generative AI matured, competitive pressure intensified and expectations rose. At the same time, governance models often lagged behind the technology, creating tension between speed and control. The paper examines how organizations are navigating that tension and why many are discovering that awareness of risk does not automatically translate into action.

Beyond AI, 2025 reinforced a broader reality where modern risks are tightly interconnected. Technology dependence, decentralized operating models, and deep reliance on third parties mean that disruption rarely stays contained. Cyber incidents, operational outages, regulatory failures, and reputational damage increasingly unfold together rather than in isolation.

Against that backdrop, the guide focuses on three themes shaping GRC agendas heading into 2026:

• AI at scale, where opportunity and risk are expanding in parallel and governance is struggling to keep pace
• Integrated risk management, as organizations confront the limits of siloed approaches in an interconnected operating environment
• Geopolitical and regulatory uncertainty, where signals are faster, noisier, and more fragmented than traditional compliance models were designed to handle

Looking ahead, the guide argues that 2026 will mark a shift from identifying risk to proving control effectiveness. The emphasis moves away from documenting issues toward demonstrating that controls are embedded, repeatable, and scalable across people, processes, technology, and third parties.

Rather than prescribing one-size-fits-all solutions, this eBook offers a grounded view of what changed in 2025, the signals that matter most right now, and the choices organizations face as they prepare for the year ahead.

Download the full report to explore the trends that shaped 2025 in more depth, understand how leading organizations are responding, and see what GRC leaders need to prioritize next as they prepare for 2026.