If 2024 was the year public affairs discovered artificial intelligence, and 2025 was the year everyone experimented with it, then 2026 is shaping up to be the year the profession starts taking a much harder look at the infrastructure underneath it.

But AI is only part of the story.

Across Europe, public affairs teams are being asked to monitor more legislation, engage with more stakeholders, respond to faster political cycles, and navigate an increasingly fragmented regulatory landscape. At the same time, new technologies are changing how intelligence is gathered, analysed and acted upon.

The result is a profession that is becoming more sophisticated, more data-driven and, in many cases, more technical.

Here are five shifts that are already reshaping public affairs in 2026.

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1. AI Is Moving From Experimentation To Procurement



Two years ago, public affairs teams were experimenting with AI. In 2026, they are buying it.

The conversation has shifted from capabilities to procurement. Buyers increasingly want to understand what sits underneath the product: how accurate it is, what happens if the underlying model changes, how data is handled and whether the platform can scale across an organisation.

This shift can be seen across the market. Established intelligence providers are integrating AI into existing workflows, while newer entrants such as SAVOIRR are building AI-native public affairs products from the ground up.

The winners will not be those with the most impressive demos. They will be those that solve real workflow problems consistently and reliably.



2. First-Party Intelligence Is Becoming A Strategic Asset



The challenge in public affairs is no longer finding information. It is making sense of it.

Faced with an overwhelming volume of legislation, consultations and stakeholder activity, organisations are investing more heavily in their own intelligence infrastructure. Internal knowledge repositories, stakeholder databases and institutional memory are becoming strategic assets rather than administrative tools.

Platforms such as FiscalNote helped establish the value of centralised policy intelligence. The next step is ownership. Increasingly, organisations want to enrich that intelligence with their own insights and reduce their dependence on external sources.

The competitive advantage is no longer access to information. It is what you can do with it.



3. Sovereignty Has Become A Technology Question



Strategic autonomy is no longer just a policy debate.

As organisations adopt more AI-powered tools, questions about data storage, jurisdiction and infrastructure are becoming part of procurement decisions.

The implementation of the AI Act and broader discussions around European digital sovereignty have accelerated this shift. Public affairs teams are increasingly asking who controls the infrastructure behind the tools they rely on and what happens if access changes.

Capability still matters. But resilience is becoming just as important.



4. Stakeholder Engagement Is Becoming More Data-Driven



Public affairs remains a relationship business, but organisations are becoming more systematic in how they manage those relationships.

Influence mapping, stakeholder intelligence and network analysis are helping teams identify emerging actors, track engagement and allocate resources more effectively.

This is not unlike what political campaigns have been doing for years. The most effective organisations combine experience and judgement with data, rather than relying solely on institutional memory.

Platforms such as Quorum reflect this broader shift towards structured stakeholder management.



5. Expertise Is Becoming More Valuable Than Information



AI is making information easier to access.

It is not making expertise less valuable.

Monitoring, summarisation and research can increasingly be automated. Understanding political incentives, stakeholder motivations and institutional dynamics cannot.

As information becomes more abundant, judgement becomes more important. The organisations that succeed will not necessarily have the most tools. They will have the strongest ability to turn information into action.



Final thoughts



The biggest shift in public affairs in 2026 is not AI.

It is the growing expectation that public affairs should operate with the same sophistication as every other strategic function inside an organisation.

The teams gaining an advantage are building stronger intelligence capabilities, treating stakeholder data as a strategic asset, and using technology to make faster, better-informed decisions.

The tools will continue to evolve, but the core challenge remains the same: turning information into influence.

The organisations that do that most effectively will be the ones best positioned to shape policy outcomes in the years ahead.

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Miles Maftean is Head of Growth, Europe at Savoirr, where he works with public affairs teams to modernise how they monitor policy, manage intelligence, and turn regulatory developments into action. Based in Warsaw, he works at the intersection of EU affairs, technology, and the evolving role of AI in public affairs, while also helping lead the launch of Savoirr PL in the Polish market.