10 factors reshaping the role of the CIO in 2026
CIOs face increasing pressure to use AI to drive innovation, deliver returns and lead their organizations into the future.
AI and other technologies are transforming how and how fast work gets done.
That has upped the pressure on CIOs as they advise their executive colleagues on how best to use digital tools to drive transformation, innovation, enterprise agility and financial success.
Deloitte surveyed senior technology leaders across the U.S. and found that 80% said their roles and responsibilities have significantly expanded to meet business objectives. "What was once a support function is now, particularly at larger enterprises, as a powerful driver of business value," Deloitte said when releasing the survey results.
This shift is impacting CIOs, said Mark Taylor, CEO of the Society for Information Management (SIM), an association for technology executives.
CIOs need to bring technical and business leadership to their roles. "They need to have a combination of technical and business savvy as well as emotional intelligence to create high-performing teams to meet all the demands that are going to fall on the IT teams and to lead their organizations through change," Taylor said. "It's going to require many CIOs to advance their capabilities as leaders."
That's just one dynamic shaping the CIO role in 2026, according to analysts, researchers, executive consultants and CIOs. There are many more. Here are 10 factors influencing the role of the CIO in the year ahead:
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The evolving CIO role: From IT operator to business strategist
1. AI for innovation
AI dominates the enterprise agenda for 2026, as it has since the 2022 arrival of the generative AI (GenAI) tool ChatGPT. CEOs, boards and other C-suite leaders are looking to use AI to fuel innovation and transformation in 2026.
"Without question, AI is impacting everyone," Taylor said.
IEEE surveyed technology leaders for its recent report and found that 96% agreed that agentic AI innovation, exploration and adoption will continue to accelerate in 2026.
Spending on AI is also accelerating in the upcoming year. According to a survey by advisory firm Teneo, 68% of CEOs plan to increase investments in AI in 2026, and 88% believe it is already helping them navigate disruption.
As technology leaders, CIOs are expected to lead all this AI-driven innovation and transformation.
"The CIO is now at the center of helping companies successfully deliver on their strategic objectives by delivering transformation and innovation that have measurable results," said Orla Daly, CIO of educational technology company Skillsoft. "So, prioritization of innovation spending continues to be important, and anyone coming with a request for an investment is expected to make a good business case."
2. Increased expectations for AI investments to deliver returns
After years of seeing many – if not most – AI initiatives fail to scale or deliver business improvements, CEOs and boards are now demanding returns on their AI investments.
"CEOs want CIOs to do more than experiment with AI and GenAI, more specifically," said Yugal Joshi, partner at global research and management consulting firm Everest Group. "They expect CIOs to find, build and scale the AI use cases that will deliver business value."
Teneo's survey noted that "as efforts shift from hype to execution, businesses are under pressure to show ROI from rising AI spend."
CIOs are feeling that pressure. Software company Flexera found that 93% of IT decision-makers said IT is often asked to innovate faster and demonstrate ROI.
3. AI innovation balanced with supply chain constraints
Financial pressure isn't the only constraint on CIOs and their AI agendas in 2026. Supply chain issues will also shape how and what CIOs do in this arena.
"Anticipated AI demand has created significant supply chain volatility for compute and memory," said Thomas Phelps, senior vice president of corporate strategy and CIO for Laserfiche.
"CIOs are already facing longer lead times for hardware, and memory costs are spiraling up at a rapid rate," he said.
He noted that the memory costs for new servers his organization wants to deploy in Asia increased by 50% over a few weeks in 2025, and that he was being quoted a three-month (or more) lead time for delivery of new networking hardware to build out a new computer room.
4. Spending on IT increases, but CIOs still feel pressure to rein in costs
Research firm Gartner estimated that worldwide IT spending will be up a healthy 9.8% in 2026 over 2025. Gartner expects total global IT spending to hit $6.08 trillion this year, making it the first year to top $6 trillion.
But CIOs remain cautious about spending, reporting more modest increases in their IT budgets.
For example, Morgan Stanley's 3Q25 CIO Survey found that IT budgets would be up about 3.8% in 2026.
Joshi said CIOs are feeling the pinch.
"All CIOs have been asked to reduce spending by 20 to 30% across various pockets of technology," he said.
He explained that CIOs still need money for innovation, so they're looking for ways to optimize, one of which is strategically managing vendors with financial incentives to drive change and work together.
Gartner highlights the challenges here, noting in its research that "57% of CIOs face pressure to improve productivity and 52% to reduce costs. CIOs who relentlessly pursue financial outcomes from technology initiatives -- especially AI -- are 25% more likely to excel, yet only 33% consistently do so."
"CIOs will need to work closely with their CFOs to budget and manage AI-driven costs," Phelps added. "Across my CIO peers, most organizations are not increasing IT head count, while investing in AI to improve productivity and drive innovation."
Phelps stated that overall technology budget increases are typically capped at 9-10%. When factoring in annual subscription increases of 5-10% from many vendors, there's not much room for investments in AI, which need to be offset by decreases in spend elsewhere. "Technology budgets that were approved for 2026 will need to be revisited again to ensure that they are valid," he added.
CIOs are investing in FinOps to help them meet the budget challenges and expectations. Flexera's "2026 IT Priorities Report" stated that 62% of surveyed IT leaders reported increased investments in FinOps services and/or platforms in 2025.
5. A faster pace of transformation and innovation
Enterprise leaders expect business transformation and innovation to happen as quickly as possible, which has CIOs working at a faster pace than ever.
"In 2024 and 2025, there was some trepidation about the economy, which led to a lack of investments. But when I look ahead to 2026, there is an expected uptick. An upward swing in investments is happening. Companies feel comfortable making investments, and that is driving an acceleration of expectations," Taylor said.
He added that there will be greater pressure on CIOs to make high-quality decisions in shorter timeframes, to be able to pivot commitments and to stand before the board to defend their decisions.
6. An expansive ecosystem of vendors and partners
CIOs will continue to see an expansive ecosystem of vendors and partners in 2026, and that ecosystem demands skilled management for IT to succeed, said Diane Carco, president and CEO of management consulting company Swingtide.
"CIOs have to realize they're running the biggest vendor management department in the company. They're linking together a tremendous number of third parties," said Carco.
Carco said not all CIOs have risen to the demands of vendor management. She has worked with CIOs who aren't thoroughly reviewing vendor contracts nor cultivating relationships with key third parties.
Those omissions, she explained, increase the risks that CIOs and their organizations face. They also limit the opportunities and support that the IT departments and their companies could gain from this large ecosystem.
"CIOs must continue to do a better job of selecting and managing their vendors. Not doing so negatively impacts cyber security risks (since most come from vendors) and prevents the most efficient rationalization or elimination of technical debt," Carco added.
7. Questionable AI capabilities, outcomes provided by vendors
Carco said CIOs must not only successfully manage their expansive ecosystem of vendors and partners but also learn to effectively oversee the AI capabilities and outcomes delivered by those vendors and partners.
"The value of AI must start with the contract," she explained. "New and exciting things are happening in AI, but [CIOs] don't know how to document contractual obligations that are reflective of the marketing promises. This happens a lot with new technology but is more challenging with AI."
She said organizations "are spending lots of money on AI solutions and the value does not always meet expectations."
Consequently, Carco said some enterprise leaders are examining their contracts to see if they can get out of them or to determine whether there is any alignment with the costs paid and the usage or value received (and typically finding none).
To avoid the need to take such actions, Carco said "CIOs need to set expectations in the contract as to the value expected or usage of the technology" and "establish who will judge the value and usage."
She warned, however, that many AI vendors won't accept such terms.
8. The need to upskill the IT team and the overall enterprise workforce
As executives embrace innovation and transformation, they must contend with a workforce that must change as well.
The Society for Human Resource Management found that 78% of the executives surveyed anticipate a growing emphasis on organizational agility in workforce management over the next 12 months, and 87% said AI-driven upskilling and reskilling will be more prevalent over the next 12 months.
Daly said that most, if not all, of the needed upskilling stems from AI and other technology-enabled innovations. This puts CIOs at the forefront of identifying the new skills needed for their teams and the organization's entire workforce.
Additionally, she said CIOs are leading the way in hiring and staffing based on skills rather than roles, as workplace needs continue to evolve rapidly. That helps set an example for other executives, she added.
Phelps also agrees that CIOs should take a leadership role in skills development.
"To truly unlock value from AI and prepare employees for the human-agentic workforce, IT leaders will need to closely partner with their people leaders on an agentic workforce strategy," he explained. "IT and people leaders need to upskill the human workforce to build and collaborate with AI agents in ways that dramatically improve productivity and enable autonomous decision-making with appropriate guardrails."
9. Cybersecurity
CIOs continue to rank cybersecurity as a top-level concern that impacts both their IT strategies and their teams' day-to-day activities.
Zach Rossmiller, CIO of the University of Montana, listed cybersecurity as one of the top factors influencing his work in 2026 – as he did in 2025.
He cited the never-ending work required to protect the university's data and IT environment from threats that are rapidly evolving and becoming more sophisticated, as bad actors become increasingly skilled at using AI to launch attacks.
"We are now seeing AI, particularly agentic and automated systems, enable end-to-end attacks that are faster, more adaptive, and require far less human intervention," he said. "Anthropic's recent work disrupting AI-driven espionage activity underscores that this shift is real, not theoretical."
At the same time, CIOs are seeing their attack surface expand due to their organizations' use of AI, creating more cybersecurity work and challenges, Rossmiller added.
"What feels different for 2026 is that the CIO's responsibility now extends both outward and inward. Externally, we are facing increasingly sophisticated, often state-sponsored actors using AI to automate reconnaissance, exploitation, and persistence. Internally, well-intentioned users can unknowingly introduce risk through AI agents, MCPs, connectors and embedded integrations that expose sensitive data or create unintended access paths," he explained.
As a result, AI governance has become inseparable from cybersecurity. Guardrails around how AI is used, what data it can access, and how it integrates with systems are now a core security function, not a separate innovation effort. The goal isn't to slow adoption, but to enable safe, scalable use.
10. Geopolitical issues and risk
CIOs have reported that they increasingly must contend with how regulation and other geopolitical issues affect technology and business decisions.
"Geopolitical developments have put that global IT operating model under enormous pressure," according to McKinsey & Company.
CIOs are adjusting in response.
For example, a Gartner survey found that geopolitics will drive 61% of CIOs and IT leaders in Western Europe to increase reliance on local cloud providers, with more than 75% of all enterprises outside of the U.S. expected to have a digital sovereignty strategy, supported by a sovereign cloud strategy, by 2030.
Gartner also named managing risk and regulatory compliance through geostrategic sourcing as one of three key themes for 2026.
"The world became more unstable right at the start of 2026," Joshi added. "Sovereignty has been a talk track [for a long time]; however, it will become critical in 2026."
He said for CIOs, geopolitical risk and the rising need for sovereign tech choices "will have a significant impact on their architecture, redundancy, backup and data management practices. Therefore, CIOs may experiment with sovereign clouds not only for typical sensitive workloads but may also expand for generic ones, fearing a worsening geopolitical landscape."
Editor's note: This article has been revised with recent surveys and new expert commentary for 2026.
Mary K. Pratt is an award-winning freelance journalist with a focus on covering enterprise IT and cybersecurity management.
