To help organizations around the world understand the business technology challenges and opportunities of the coming year, Spiceworks has published its 14th annual State of IT report.provides a forward-looking outlook for IT spending and technology adoption in 2026.
Published in partnership with our colleagues at Aberdeen Strategy & Research, this report helps organizations benchmark their 2026 budget plans across spending categories, highlights common AI business use cases, and takes a deep dive into the cybersecurity solutions IT departments are planning to deploy.
How Spiceworks reveals insights into your IT spending
Thanks to the Spiceworks community and millions of IT professionals who use our apps, including cloud helpdesk tools and proven analytics, Spiceworks and Aberdeen Research are able to capture and share unique technology market insights. To create the 2026 State of IT, we surveyed 835 IT professionals representing companies across North America and Europe about their technology plans for the next 12 months. The data was then compared to previous years' surveys and analyzed for trends.
Key highlights of the report:
- In 2026, 55% of businesses plan to increase their IT budgets, and overall IT spending is expected to increase by approximately 11%
- The main reasons for budget increases are the need to upgrade outdated infrastructure, increased priorities for IT projects, and increased security concerns.
- Business AI adoption has doubled in the past two years and is now 52% in use. However, current use cases are practical and focus on low-hanging fruit, and advanced use cases require more fundamental work to be accomplished.
Additional insights from the state of IT in 2026:
- Interactive chart of 2026 IT spending plans by company size and region
- Areas where companies plan to cut costs in 2026
- Spending breakdown across hardware, software, and cloud
- Interactive chart showing adoption of emerging technologies by business size
- Current gaps in AI strategy for business
- Read the full 2026 State of IT report.
Hear from the team behind the insights
We recently provided an exclusive preview of our 2026 State of IT research during our keynote at the SpiceWorld conference in Austin, Texas.
You can now watch a recording of that keynote and chat directly with the three analysts who worked on the study. They will watch along with you, sharing additional data points and providing context not shared at the event.
Join us for the 2026 State of IT livestream event on December 17, 2025 at 1:00 PM EST. Don't miss it!
Register for the 2026 State of IT Keynote Watch Party
