2026 Has Arrived. Here Are the Six Shifts That Will Define It

Every January brings a flood of marketing predictions. Most are forgotten by February.

This year feels different. When Forrester, McKinsey, Gartner, and IDC converge on the same themes - independently and within weeks of each other - the signal is worth heeding.

But here's what most prediction pieces won't tell you: your buyer just asked an AI for vendor recommendations. Your company wasn't in the answer. Not because your product is inferior. Because your content wasn't structured for how buyers actually search now.

That's just one of six shifts now shaping life science commercial strategy:

1. Trust becomes your only defensible moat - peer validation outperforms vendor messaging
2. Poor buyer enablement costs you deals - friction in self-education pushes buyers to competitors
3. AI changes discovery, not just creation - if you're not in the AI-generated answer, you're not in the consideration set
4. MQLs become a vanity metric - account-level engagement replaces lead volume
5. Human connection earns strategic investment - events prove ROI or lose budget
6. Measurement frameworks face forced rebuild - cookie deprecation accelerates the shift to first-party data

Here's what each means for teams running lean, under pressure, and wondering where to focus this year.

Trust is your only defensible position

McKinsey's State of Marketing Europe 2026 report found branding ranked as the number one CMO priority - above generative AI. Forrester predicts 75% of enterprise B2B companies will increase influencer budgets this year.

Why? Because buying committees don't trust vendor messaging anymore. They trust peers. They trust published researchers. They trust the colleague who's actually used the instrument.

Life science marketers have always known this. KOL relationships built on peer-reviewed credibility have consistently outperformed campaigns. The difference now: every B2B sector is catching up to what you've been doing. Your advantage only holds if you double down on it.

Forrester explicitly labels 2026 "the year evidence supersedes AI hype."

The implication: thought leadership without scientific credibility is noise. If your content can't be validated by the researchers reading it, it won't be trusted.

Poor buyer enablement now costs you deals

Gartner's Philip Black didn't mince words in Marketing Week's analysis: "B2B buyers are penalising brands if they have poor buyer enablement." Their research found your website is now "just as important to buyers as sales reps."

Translation: if your website can't answer the questions a procurement committee has at 10pm on a Thursday, you've already lost.

This isn't about design. It's about whether buyers can self-educate, compare options, and progress through their decision without friction. Life science buying cycles are already long - 6 to 18 months for capital equipment. Every point of friction extends that timeline. Every form gate that blocks basic technical information pushes them towards competitors who don't make them work so hard.

AI changes how you're found, not just how you create

Most AI conversation in marketing focuses on content creation. The bigger shift is content discovery.

According to 6sense research cited in multiple 2026 prediction reports, 94% of B2B buyers used large language models during their 2025 buying journey. Deloitte's TMT Predictions note embedded AI usage in search is now 300% higher than standalone AI tools.

A new discipline is emerging: Generative Engine Optimisation. This means structuring your content so AI systems perceive, interpret, and recommend your brand as a trusted answer.

For life science, this cuts both ways. Technical depth helps - AI models tend to favour substantive, well-structured content over marketing fluff. But if your technical documentation lives behind registration walls, AI can't index it. If your product pages lack structured data, you're invisible to the systems your buyers are now using.

The implication is uncomfortable: if you're not in the AI-generated answer, you may not be in the consideration set at all.

MQLs are becoming a vanity metric

Forrester, McKinsey, and IDC all converge on the same conclusion: account-based, buying-group orchestration is now the default operating model.

McKinsey's research explains why. Only 5% of buyers are actively shopping at any moment. 80% already have a vendor in mind before they start researching. By the time someone becomes a "lead," the decision is largely made.

For life science marketers measured on lead volume, this is uncomfortable. But it matches reality. A single MQL from a grad student downloading a whitepaper isn't worth the same as an engaged buying committee at a pharma company evaluating a £500k purchase.

The shift: account-level metrics - deal influence, committee engagement, revenue velocity - will replace lead dashboards in organisations serious about growth. Marketing teams still reporting MQL counts will find themselves explaining why volume doesn't translate to pipeline.

Human connection earns strategic investment

IDC reports 58% of B2B marketers expect event budgets to increase in 2026. This isn't nostalgia - it's ROI-driven. Their survey found cost per opportunity (67%) and lead quality (60%) are the top success metrics for events.

For life science, conferences have always been essential. The challenge now: proving it. Anecdotal relationship-building won't survive budget scrutiny. The marketers who connect event attendance to specific pipeline progression will get more budget. Those who can't will get less.

The other shift: hybrid formats. 57% of marketers now prioritise hybrid events - combining the depth of in-person with the scale of digital follow-up. The days of treating events as standalone activities are ending.

Measurement frameworks face a forced rebuild

Only 39% of marketers currently measure business outcomes, according to Marketing Week's effectiveness survey. Cookie deprecation is forcing the issue.

For life science marketers, attribution has always been messy. Long sales cycles, multiple stakeholders, offline conversations - the standard digital attribution models were never designed for this reality. But "it's complicated" isn't an answer leadership accepts anymore.

The organisations rebuilding measurement around first-party data, unified models, and actual revenue influence will be able to justify their budgets. Those still reporting on clicks and impressions will face cuts when finance asks what marketing actually delivered.

The execution gap

Research we conducted in partnership with ELRIG, surveying over 100 life science exhibitors at Drug Discovery 2025, revealed the uncomfortable reality: 68% of organisations are optimistic about AI, but only 7% have integrated it extensively into their workflows.

Optimism isn't strategy. Access isn't adoption.

The gap between knowing these shifts are coming and actually building the infrastructure to respond - the content architecture, the account intelligence, the measurement systems, the skills - will determine who wins and who watches.

These six shifts don't require massive budgets. They require focus. Pick the one where you're most exposed, and start building capability before Q2.

The organisations that win in 2026 won't be those who read about these trends. They'll be the ones who did something about them.

This is Part 1 of a two-part series on 2026 predictions for life science commercial teams. Part 2 examines the uncomfortable internal dynamics the analysts don't talk about - why knowing these shifts isn't enough, and what determines whether your organisation actually responds.

The ELRIG Drug Discovery 2025 research referenced in this article is available as a full report.

We're hosting a webinar January 21 at 3pm GMT with ELRIG to discuss the findings and their implications for life science commercial teams, we'd love you to join us.