Retail Technology Trends for 2026 and Beyond

Retail and QSR leaders face workforce shortages, shifting customer expectations, and rising cybersecurity risks. This report explores how connected technologies—including agentic AI, unified commerce, edge computing, IoT, and advanced security—are helping overcome these challenges. It highlights how AI agents support purchasing and operations, unified commerce connects customer and operational data, edge computing powers in‑store workloads, IoT delivers real‑time insights, and layered, zero‑trust security protects growing endpoints and identities.