ITSM trends in 2026: Where to invest vs. where to wait

Top 5 ITSM trends in 2026

There are multiple ITSM trends worth watching, experts said.

These trends have arisen in response to CIO needs, specifically rising complexity, ticket volume, pressure to lower costs, hybrid work environment, faster release cycles, demands for better employee experiences and rising expectations to use AI to gain efficiencies, said Sue Bergamo, a longtime IT and cybersecurity leader who served as a trustee with the Boston chapter of the Society for Information Management.

Here's a closer look at five notable ITSM trends.

1. AI in ITSM

The availability of AI capabilities in ITSM is nearly universal, but their use by IT departments hasn't been as widespread to date. That's now changing.

"Adoption is growing quickly, though most organizations are still early‑to‑mid maturity," said Bergamo, who provides fractional CIO and chief information security officer services through BTE Partners and now serves as general partner and CISO at Cyber Scale.

Figures from a May 2026 report, "The State of AI in ITSM" from ITSM provider TeamDynamix, confirm as much.

The report, which was based on responses from 392 IT professionals, found that 87% of organizations use or plan to use AI in ITSM within the next two years. More specifically, the research showed that 55% were piloting AI, 28% were in the deployment phase and 4% were optimizing it.

Among those who are using AI, 88% use it AI for knowledge management (KM), gap identification and content creation; 82% use it to power virtual agents to deflect tickets; and 71% use AI to accelerate resolution through improved triage.

Bergamo said she also sees IT using AI to improve ticketing systems with automated routing, categorization, virtual agents, summaries and workflow automation.

Additionally, the TeamDynamix research found that the IT departments using AI are seeing benefits, with 82% reporting ticket deflection, 71% reporting reduced resolution times and 76% reporting improved customer satisfaction.

However, Bryce Austin, who offers CIO, CISO and consulting services through his firm TCE Strategy, said IT organizations must have the data readiness to make effective use of AI.

"If you give the AI engine enough information to go on, it can be quite good," Austin said. But it "can also be a waste of time" for IT departments that lack the data and AI readiness to make effective use of the AI components offered by ITSM platform makers.

2. The integration of ITSM and FinOps

IT shops use ITSM to ensure they're deploying, operating and managing technology and digital services optimally.

CIOs are tasked with doing all that cost-effectively. So, CIOs are increasingly adopting FinOps, a framework to manage technology costs -- including those from cloud computing and AI use.

ITSM now incorporates that, said Jeff Orr, director of research for IT and technologies and head of the CIO and IT leader research practice at ISG Research. "Financial management is an ITSM pillar, which is increasingly becoming FinOps," he added.

According to The FinOps Foundation's 2026 "State of FinOps" report, collaboration between FinOps and ITSM teams has more than doubled since 2023 -- going from 24% in 2023 to 56% in 2025 -- and the percentage of integrated teams has increased fourfold, from 3% in 2023 to 12% in 2025.

3. ITSM as an operational layer

ITSM is essentially a system of record that captures IT's institutional knowledge and details of IT activities. As Orr noted, ITSM encompasses all the guidelines, policies and processes that enable IT -- and therefore, the business -- to operate.

Of course, ITSM platforms also support and enable IT actions and activities around those guidelines, policies and processes.

But ITSM platforms are evolving to do even more.

Using automation enabled by machine learning and AI, ITSM platforms are now coordinating across different systems, Orr said.

"It's that change which is creating an operational layer," he said, explaining that an ITSM platform can look at various aspects -- from service delivery to policies, regulations and governance -- and combine them with visibility across different clouds and infrastructures to keep the environment safe, secure, optimized and cost-efficient.

"AI technology and automation are providing insights to the organization, providing answers to the question, 'Did you know this is going on in your organization?'" he said.

"ITSM is becoming a system of action," according to Orr, who has also called this "the end of passive IT service management."

4. Evolving ITSM to enterprise service management

True to its name, ITSM is all about IT services: the design, delivery and improvement thereof.

But as IT and digital environments have become intertwined with business functions in inseparable, indistinguishable ways, ITSM is evolving into enterprise service management.

ESM platforms offer a unified portal, providing a single point where employees can request services that require action across multiple departments, not just IT -- such as expanded access credentials tied to a promotion.

ESM platforms also offer cross-department workflow automation, universal KM, enterprise-wide incident management, business service analytics and other capabilities that extend components from IT to the overall enterprise.

"Enterprise service management is ITSM for non-IT departments," Orr said. He noted that ESM platforms can support the unique requirements of various functions, such as the specific data privacy requirements associated with personnel data in HR, while breaking down the siloed workflows that have persisted even for cross-functional service requests.

Orr described ESM as a subset of ITSM, explaining that ESM includes ITSM, but not all ITSM platforms include ESM. He said organizations approaching the end of life for their existing ITSM platforms face the choice between moving to ESM and staying with vendors that provide only ITSM.

Worldwide Market Reports estimated the global ESM platform market size at $6.2 billion in 2025 and predicted it will reach $12.1 billion by 2032, for a CAGR of 10.1% from 2025 to 2032. It attributed that anticipated growth to "organizations increasingly [recognizing] the importance of streamlining processes across various service domains."

5. XLAs, not SLAs

Although UX isn't one of ITSM's traditional pillars, it has long been important to IT's success. The shift from service-level agreements (SLAs) to experience-level agreements (XLAs) reflects the growing importance of UX in IT service management.

Swapping XLAs for SLAs has been happening for a few years, and it's becoming more prevalent in 2026, with Bergamo explaining that it moves IT to "outcome-based ITSM," which "focuses on the experience and results IT delivers -- not just whether a ticket met an SLA."

Research shows that shifting to XLAs helps drive user productivity and satisfaction, as well as continuous improvement within IT delivery, better than the use of traditional SLAs.

Prioritizing adoption of ITSM trends

These and other advancements in ITSM are having positive effects on IT departments and the organizations they service, experts said.

Bergamo said the benefits include the following:  

• Faster resolution time.
• Reduced workloads.
• Better cross‑team collaboration and communications.
• More automation and fewer manual workflows for greater speed and efficiency.
• More visibility into business impact.

For IT organizations looking to invest, experts said all the 2026 trends can yield benefits; however, they noted IT teams must have the change management, resources and maturity -- especially with data -- to ensure successful adoption of more AI capabilities, FinOps for AI and even XLAs instead of SLAs.

In terms of a priority list, Bergamo listed AI‑driven automation, which provides immediate efficiency gains and reduces operational load; DevOps/DevSecOps integration, which also improves speed, stability and cross‑team collaboration; and outcome‑based ITSM, or XLAs, as more immediate to-dos for their ability to improve productivity and experience.

Low‑code/cloud‑native modernization and ESM ranked No. 4 and No. 5 on her priority list.

However, she and other experts said CIOs should prioritize which new ITSM capabilities to adopt first based on their organization's needs, goals and size.

They said that what's more important than deciding which to adopt first is ensuring they adopt new capabilities to evolve their ITSM. That evolution, experts stressed, is key to continuous improvement and to transforming how IT operates.

"That then leads to better decision-making about where your IT funds should be going to make IT delivery better, more efficient and more secure," Austin added.

Mary K. Pratt is an award-winning freelance journalist with a focus on covering enterprise IT and cybersecurity management.