The corporate real estate (CRE) landscape has reached an inflection point. After years of reactive rightsizing and pandemic-driven pivots, 2026 marks the year when real estate redefines its role from a necessary cost into a strategic differentiator. While 72% of organizations prioritize cost reduction, future-focused companies are leveraging efficiencies to invest in technology, experience and flexibility to unlock competitive advantages that transcend simple expense management. The industry faces accelerating change, requiring CRE leaders not only to react to trends, but also to proactively manage change, develop adaptable talent and foster stronger business integration.

The speed of change in 2026 introduces a new leadership mandate: sustainable endurance. Technology adoption cycles are now moving faster than human learning curves, creating pressure, burnout and capability gaps across CRE teams. Winning organizations will not only identify the right strategies but build the cultural and talent foundations to absorb change continuously. In this context, proactive change management, adaptive organizational design and stronger business-CRE integration become essential. Here’s what successful CRE leaders need to know, and do, to gain advantage in 2026. 

Definition: Commercial real estate strategies evolve from fixed, long-term commitments to agile, elastic portfolios that flex across asset types to meet organizational goals. By combining core headquarters, satellite hubs and on-demand flex spaces, organizations enable adaptable workplace models. Real-time portfolio data empowers CRE teams to quickly scale, reconfigure, and optimize space in response to changing business needs.

The Reality: Reducing operating costs and portfolio optimization top the list of corporate real estate priorities today, yet talent acquisition and retention remain critical to overall business growth. As office utilization rates average just 54% globally, with a 25-point gap from the average target of 79%, operational efficiency remains a key challenge. This is a more acute issue in North America, where the utilization gap is 29 points. While that’s significant, the result won’t necessarily be more downsizing: 43% of corporate leaders globally expect headcounts to rise and 33% expect footprints to increase over the next several years. CRE leaders must consider how to align portfolios with workforce growth, technology adoption and new talent hubs. In this fast-evolving context, organizations must also evolve their portfolio to support new skills and iterative work models, such as labs and critical environments within workplaces. This ecosystem approach requires adaptive structures and closer alignment with business strategies to anticipate emerging needs.

Why It Matters Now: Persistent underutilization and more dynamic workforce requirements make fixed footprints financially inefficient. Although regional drivers vary -with North America more challenged by the utilization gap, APAC more focused on workforce and footprint growth and EMEA focused on optimization and cost reduction - the need for more dynamic portfolio strategies will be critical in all regions for 2026. Uncertainty in headcount forecasting, which is becoming even more challenging due to AI job shifts and volatile project cycles, calls for variable capacity without long-term commitments, requiring elastic portfolio models that consider both physical and operational adaptability. 

2026 Call to Action: Treat portfolio optimization like a technology platform, not a project. Implement monthly scenario planning cycles that integrate utilization data, booking patterns and business drivers for operational elasticity. CFOs should prioritize cost agility where real estate becomes a variable expense tied to business cycles. Flex providers and landlords offer enterprise-grade solutions, making mixed portfolios viable. Deploy flexible lease clauses and modular buildouts as standard practice. Most importantly, reframe rightsizing as a growth enabler. Organizations that master continuous optimization and embrace elastic portfolio models can pivot faster for market entries, talent acquisitions and capital redeployment when opportunities arise.

Definition: A mature, data-driven workplace model that connects flexible work patterns, experience strategies and location factors for improved employee outcomes of performance and wellbeing.

The Reality: Employees broadly understand current attendance frameworks - 66% say their employer has a clear policy and 72% view it positively. But understanding doesn’t equal showing up. Support and compliance rise when the workplace feels worth the commute; resistance correlates with poor comfort, limited autonomy and weak wellbeing support. Put simply: people don’t reject the office-they reject bad office experiences and poor locations. 

Flexibility, in terms of location and working hours, has become a human need, not a perk. Work-life balance now outranks salary as the top retention driver (65%), and 57% say flexible hours would improve quality of life. This means the office must adapt to better support this new orchestration of work and life.

Meanwhile, experience itself is becoming more important as a lever to drive performance and is central to talent attraction and retention strategies. With burnout affecting 40% of workers globally and ‘always on’ challenges mounting, employers recognize that an effective workplace experience can directly impact productivity and mental wellbeing. Employers are challenged with needing to support flexibility while also addressing the hidden burden of hybrid work: the pressure for constant availability across physical and digital realms.

With more days in the office and work-life balance top of mind, the workplace’s location also becomes more vital for the employee experience. Globally, 67% of people value a workplace in a vibrant location, and this figure is highest in India (84%), the Middle East (78% KSA, 76% UAE) and China (77%). In geographies with rapidly expanding urban hubs and longer commute times, employees are keen to enhance the value of their working day.

Why It Matters Now: With 52% of organizations now requiring 3-4 days in-office, structured attendance is increasing, but effectiveness depends on making offices genuinely ‘“commute-worthy’.” 

Experience strategies now extend beyond the office itself; CRE leaders are seeking vibrant neighborhoods to provide broader amenity access without requiring everything within the corporate space, a key consideration for portfolio optimization. More than two-thirds of people globally expect the right ‘experience’ to be incorporated into the places they live, work and play. What wins attention in retail and hospitality also wins in the office: wellness and nature (73% say more greenery near their workplace would improve wellbeing), personalization (74% prefer places that recognize and tailor to them) and convenience through multi-amenity access. 

2026 Call to Action: Organizations focused on talent attraction and productivity will bring together strategies for a flexible working policy, work environment and location for a holistic yet competitive employee value proposition in 2026. 

Location strategies focused on healthy and vibrant places, as well as workplace programs providing discounts to local amenities or connections to local events, will provide employees with more value from their commutes and improve overall experience.

Learning from hospitality and retail sectors, experience-centric workplaces will focus on experience touchpoints that provide opportunities for personalization and convenience for work scheduling, workspace type and amenity access. 

Data-driven frameworks for experience-centric workplaces will focus on investment in combined data environments for CRE and HR connectivity to inform flexible workplace policies that benefit employee satisfaction and CRE optimization. Organizations should invest in capturing and leveraging high-quality data as a foundational enabler - even before a clear return on investment is visible - to support proactive change management and enable future evolution. Companies will benefit from HR tech that now integrates scheduling, utilization and performance data, enabling evidence-based hybrid policies that balance structure with individual needs.

Definition: The integration of advanced artificial intelligence into building systems and workplace platforms, creating responsive environments that adapt to real-time data and user needs. This connected approach enables automated operations, predictive maintenance and optimized space and energy management, supporting seamless experiences, enhanced efficiency and smarter decision-making across the organization.

The Reality: AI exploration has exploded - from under 5% of CRE teams planning pilots in 2023 to 92% in 2025 - yet most are still in the experimental phase. The bottleneck isn’t ambition, it’s foundational, with 54% citing compatibility issues with legacy infrastructure as the top barrier. Despite this, several workplace technologies have surpassed an 80% adoption rate, including tools for predictive management and maintenance, data warehousing for CRE data and energy and emissions management platforms, showing that operational efficiency is swiftly emerging as the most impactful area for AI investment. 

In facilities management specifically, 28% have actively embedded AI solutions, with work order management (57%) and asset life cycle insights (54%) leading investment priorities. These aren’t moonshot projects—they’re practical applications delivering measurable ROI through automated performance tracking, predictive maintenance and operational optimization. 

Why It Matters Now: Sensor networks, access control, Wi-Fi analytics and booking systems now provide rich data streams for AI to act on. However, sorting and organizing this fragmented information remains a major challenge—and is widely seen as the top use case for AI in commercial real estate today. Energy and maintenance are among the largest controllable OPEX items: AI can cut costs 10%-30% through predictive controls. AI tools can support landlords and occupiers seeking operational resilience amid labor shortages in facilities and property management, but these require foundational data structures and upskilling of existing staff. Employees ranked on-site concierges as one of the top preferences to support in-office attendance, and AI assistants could improve employee experience (finding teammates, booking the right space, surfacing meeting alternatives) and reduce friction, supporting hybrid adoption within cost-restrained environments. 

2026 Call to Action: Address the fundamentals that will unlock AI’s full value for CRE by focusing on both your talent’s skills and your organization’s data infrastructure. Rethink how CRE partners with IT, HR, finance and core business functions, leveraging joint expertise and shared data to solve high-impact problems and maximize value across the organization. Prioritize strengthening your data architecture - ensuring interoperability, quality and governance - before scaling AI initiatives. Map future success by defining meaningful metrics, identifying the data required and building systems to track and share it across functions.

Launch pilots that address proven use cases, such as work order optimization, energy management and space analytics - where 61% of organizations are already realizing significant impact. Invest in change management and skills development to foster widespread adoption and innovation, transforming CRE and allied functions into collaborative, future-ready partners.

Definition: Facilities management (FM) is entering a new era that demands proactive talent upskilling, functional transformation and effective change management. Building a future-ready FM organization requires investing in human-centric skills, embracing technology and adopting agile structures that empower teams to adapt as roles and workflows evolve with AI, automation and changing business priorities.

The Reality: 84% of FM leaders identify escalating operating costs and budget constraints as their top concern, while occupant wellbeing and workplace safety tied for second on their priority list. Yet the accelerating adoption of digital tools and AI is fundamentally altering the required skills, mindsets and structures of FM teams. Upskilling existing employees, managing change effectively and bringing in new digital-first talent are now as critical as cost efficiency or process excellence. Organizations must therefore assess and plan for a CRE talent transformation that embeds digital, analytical and change management capabilities into every role. Investment in training, agile cross-functional teams and new approaches to leadership are required to unlock the full value of technology while supporting a human-first workplace.

Why It Matters Now: Leading organizations are reimagining FM as a competitive advantage by recognizing their essential role in creating environments that support wellbeing and productivity while demonstrating measurable ROI through financial and human outcomes. Supply chain optimization and strategic partnerships are becoming essential levers for cost savings, while data and technology drive automation and workflow efficiencies without sacrificing human experience.

2026 Call to Action: Prepare your teams and organization for the scale of transformation ahead in facilities management. Building a future-ready FM function demands readiness for change through development of digital fluency, innovation capabilities and adaptive leadership that enable teams to navigate and shape ongoing disruption. Balance operational excellence with employee experience by fostering a culture where cost efficiency and engagement are mutually reinforcing priorities. Commit to talent and change strategies that build problem-solving skills, empathy and collaboration, while leveraging technology to automate high-volume tasks and support a safety-first environment.

Incorporate occupant satisfaction and engagement metrics alongside traditional operational KPIs, enabling leaders to measure safety, satisfaction and performance - not just cost per square foot. By prioritizing these fundamentals, FM leaders can create resilient, people-centric operations that thrive amid continuous innovation and evolving workplace demands.

Definition: A mature, data-driven sustainability strategy that integrates continuous energy tracking, real-time monitoring and advanced analytics to optimize usage, control costs and meet evolving compliance standards. Smart metering, IoT sensors and AI-powered insights enable organizations to maximize cost savings, support decarbonization goals and enhance resilience across the portfolio.

The Reality: A growing share of real estate stock faces functional, locational and regulatory obsolescence that threatens both compliance and asset values. For CRE leaders, these risks are also critical in the face of energy cost increases, which have accelerated in the last four years, ranging from 20% in India to more than 50% in the UK. Energy performance was ranked a top sustainability driver (62%). Higher costs, combined with tightening regulation and ongoing operational pressures, make robust energy management an urgent business priority. However, many organizations still lack comprehensive mechanisms to track, measure and optimize utility consumption on a recurring basis. Data silos, outdated systems and lack of real-time performance insights hinder efforts to achieve - let alone sustain - energy savings at scale. Developing strong processes and platforms for energy data integration is now foundational.

Effective energy management tracking not only unlocks direct cost savings but also provides the credible data required for compliance, risk mitigation and future investment cases. High-quality energy data even empowers further business cases for decarbonization, proving that sustainability and utility cost reduction go hand in hand.

Why It Matters Now: Regulations are tightening globally through building performance standards, disclosure mandates and embodied carbon limits, creating penalties and asset devaluation risks for laggards. Asia Pacific and EMEA lead the way, as our recent client survey shows 44% of organizations in Asia Pacific and 49% in EMEA have publicly committed to net zero emissions, compared to 33% in the Americas. However, 62% in the Americas say energy performance is the biggest driver for achieving sustainability goals. Smart building technology and AI now enable measurable savings and verifiable reporting, converting sustainability from cost center to ROI engine by improving energy efficiency and reducing waste. And 59% of occupiers report significant cost savings from retrofit projects, with 55% seeing enhanced asset values and 43% noting improved employee productivity as additional value creation. 

2026 Call to Action: Invest in state-of-the-art energy monitoring, metering and analytics platforms as a strategic business imperative, not just a compliance checkbox. Ensure that energy data is fully integrated into operational dashboards and decision-making frameworks at all levels of the organization. Set clear, transparent targets for utility cost savings, and embed these into capital allocation, vendor negotiations and retrofitting plans. Foster a culture of continuous improvement, where the pursuit of utility reductions is integrated with broader financial and environmental objectives.

These trends aren’t independent - they’re interconnected elements of a strategic transformation. At the center is the recognition that high-quality, integrated data is the foundation and connective tissue of effective change in CRE. Leaders should elevate investment in data infrastructure - not as a cost to be justified individually but as a vital platform that enables rapid adaptation, experimentation and talent transformation. Business value from AI, energy management and portfolio agility all depend on this commitment. The common foundation is high-quality, integrated data that elevates CRE as a true C-suite partner. The organizations that master this integration - linking cost optimization with employee experience, AI capabilities with human-centric design and strategic partnerships with operational excellence - won’t just manage real estate costs. They’ll transform their physical footprint into a platform for competitive advantage, talent attraction and business resilience.