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As we close 2025 and start preparing for another dynamic, innovation-driven year, let’s take a look at some emerging trends that are likely to become more prevalent going into 2026. This time around we’ll focus on noteworthy software development trends rather than more general technology trends.
Development & AI
The first cluster of development trends we need to highlight is of course related to AI. There are three specific areas we need to consider here.
General AI hype
While AI innovation has been all the rage for the past three years, the hype appears to be slowing down now. We’re seeing fewer announcements of new custom shiny tools that all promise to solve the same problems, while there is a greater focus on the evolution and refinement of existing AI solutions that address actual needs and pain points.
AI experts are already highlighting signs of the AI bubble bursting, and we are now starting to more realistically grasp the real potential of AI together with a first-hand understanding of its limitations.
AI-assisted development (“vibe coding”)
For developers, one of the most important emerging AI trends has been AI-assisted coding, or vibe coding. Just a few months ago, it was hard to go a day without someone on social media announcing how big of a game changer vibe coding is.
Given the current speed of innovation, however, reservations about the omnipotence of vibe coding are starting to become more and more frequent. Non-developers initially amazed by how effortlessly they can build apps with AI are now realizing they’re at a loss if anything goes wrong with the vibe coded applications. Vibe coded solutions are easy to build, but pretty much impossible to maintain, debug and scale without actual development skills.
Going forward, we’re likely to see best practices getting established here, with development skills being a prerequisite for actually making good use of AI-assisted coding. Even the strongest proponents of AI have been emphasizing the need for a human in the loop from the very start of the hype.
For companies, the key challenge will be efficiently scaling their AI implementations in such a way that they transform individual productivity gains of AI code assistants into business-wide benefits. This includes making better use of developers’ skills and time by involving them more regularly in the strategy/business areas.
New AI-specific developer roles
Rather than seeing more and more new AI tools, we’re more likely to expect an emergence of new specialized AI-specific developer roles as businesses attempt to optimally implement their AI strategies.
One such role that has already become widely adopted is the AI engineer, but we’re now also starting to see even more niche roles for very specific cases, such as the forward-deployed engineer. Time will tell if these also become widespread, remain niche, or turn out to just be temporary buzzwords.
Custom development
Another trend that’s related to AI but deserves its own dedicated section is custom development – and, specifically, how it’s affected by the rise of AI and other tools that simplify the creation of digital experiences.
On the one hand, vibe coding makes developing custom websites and applications much smoother and more accessible. On the other hand, AI-driven low-code/no-code tools seem to essentially do away with the very need for most custom development. Both of these trends have been prevalent over the past few years.
So, what does this imply for “traditional” custom web and application development? As already mentioned in the above section on AI-assisted coding, the development ease which these tools bring does not altogether eliminate the need for custom-developed solutions which require developers with hands-on industry experience and an understanding of latest development standards.
Namely, complex enterprise websites and business applications will require the same level of dedication and development expertise as always. Not only do they have higher standards of quality, they also often involve cases that cannot be adequately addressed without deep technical knowledge. These include:
- Complex integrations, especially with outdated or less used technologies;
- Large amounts of traffic and data, especially in cases where the system is highly data-driven and/or in dynamic applications;
- Government regulations, such as accessibility, security and privacy requirements. Despite government’s slower pace when it comes to technology, these can change fairly regularly, which sometimes requires complete system overhauls rather than just minor upgrades.
Developer experience
Another trend that has been and is likely to remain on the rise is the focus on great developer experience, in both the technology and the people/team context. The rise of AI-assisted coding is actually also a reflection of this drive to improve developer experience. For skilled developers who are able to combine it with their unique human input, the productivity gains are indeed a significant improvement in their day-to-day work.
Beyond AI, other tools and frameworks have been recognizing the need for great developer experiences. Technologies such as Laravel, Next.js, Vue and Nuxt.js were conceptualized precisely with the aim of providing a better developer experience for existing language environments. Even languages with a historically poor developer experience have been prioritizing it more in recent releases (PHP 8.5, for example).
As said, though, streamlined, user-friendly tooling is just one aspect of a great developer experience. The other key ingredient are a plethora of team/culture features such as:
- Healthy overall company culture with good communication and a high degree of psychological safety on teams;
- Proper onboarding of new team mates and dedicated mentorship for juniors;
- Good, thorough and regularly updated documentation;
- Meaningful career development;
- Projects and products that are fun and/or have a positive real-life impact.
Open source software in government
Government is a sector where technology innovation and adoption tends to be a bit behind compared to the private sector. Of course, companies have been putting open source technologies to great use for a long time, and while many government institutions around the world are already betting on open source platforms like Drupal and WordPress.
We can expect adoption of open source in the public sector to increase as organizations and institutions fully embrace the need for digital transformation, while needing cost-effective options to do so.
We’ve already been seeing indicators of this shift over the past few years, with initiatives like the UN Secretary General's Roadmap for Digital Cooperation and the European Union's Cyber Resilience Act.
Another one is the very recent EU Open Source Week, which focuses on specific open source projects in the upcoming 2026 edition with conferences such as the first-ever Drupal EU Government Day. The event is publicly supported by the European Commission, signaling a strong strategic prioritization of digital sovereignty and open infrastructure for EU institutions going forward.
Conclusion
Software development is a fast-paced and constantly evolving field. The recent AI advancements are bringing uncertainty, but also opportunity. We are definitely in the phase where best practices are still getting established, and so it will be interesting to see how things progress in 2026.
