Looking ahead: what can you expect in 2026? Ecosystem, Community, Apps growth

Looking back before we look ahead

Before diving into what 2026 has in store, it’s worth pausing for a moment to appreciate just how much happened over the past year. 2025 was a defining year for us.

Our team grew, not only in size but in experience and ambition. We shipped meaningful updates across all of our apps, with a strong focus on stability, flexibility, and real-world use cases. We launched a monthly newsletter on our LinkedIn to share app updates more transparently - if you haven’t subscribed yet, you still can do it here .

The past year brought us new partnerships, strengthened existing ones, and allowed us to meet an incredible number of customers, partners, and Atlassian community members at events around the world. Big thanks to all of you!

What to expect in 2026: big shifts across the Atlassian ecosystem

2026 is shaping up to be an important year for Atlassian customers, partners, and Marketplace vendors alike. Platform architecture, pricing models, AI capabilities, and deployment strategies are all evolving at once.

Here are the key themes we expect to define the year ahead.

The Data Center milestone: March 30, 2026

For organizations still running Atlassian Data Center, 2026 is no longer about if migration will happen, it’s about how well prepared you are.

Starting March 30, 2026, Atlassian will stop selling new Data Center licenses and Marketplace apps to new customers. Cloud becomes the mandatory starting point for all new Atlassian deployments. While existing Data Center customers will still be able to renew and expand through 2028, 2026 is widely positioned as the year of assessment and decision-making.

Enterprises are expected to finalize migration strategies, assess security and compliance gaps, and redesign collaboration models that were previously tied to on‑premise assumptions. Waiting longer increases both technical debt and cost pressure as the final 2029 end‑of‑life approaches.

A major platform change: Units (expected early 2026)

One of the most significant architectural changes coming to Atlassian Cloud is the introduction of Units .

Units are designed to give large organizations finer control over their Cloud environments by segmenting users, apps, and data into smaller, logical contexts. This helps enterprises manage scale without sacrificing governance.

Units also play a crucial role in AI adoption. By scoping Atlassian Intelligence and Rovo to specific Units, organizations can improve answer relevance while maintaining stronger data boundaries, a critical requirement for regulated industries and global enterprises.

From AI assistance to agentic workflows: Rovo’s Evolution

In 2026, Atlassian AI moves beyond summarization and search toward execution.

Rovo Dev is expected to expand deeper across the Software Collection, supporting automated code reviews, test generation, and even implementation‑ready code directly from Jira issues. At the same time, Atlassian is pushing the concept of custom AI agents built with Rovo Skills.

These agents won’t just respond to prompts - they’ll take action. Triggering workflows, updating external systems like GitHub or AWS, and coordinating work across tools will increasingly happen from inside the Atlassian platform.

The rise of Product Collections

Atlassian continues to move away from selling standalone tools in favor of outcome‑oriented bundles called Collections.

• Service Collection focuses on customer service management, combining Jira Service Management with AI‑powered automation, video interactions, and faster ticket resolution.

• Strategy Collection brings together Focus, Talent, and Jira Align to help leadership connect strategic goals with execution on the ground.

For customers, this means buying capabilities rather than tools. And for Marketplace vendors, building apps that integrate seamlessly across collections becomes even more important.

Forge pricing: a new reality for App Development

As of January 1, 2026, Atlassian has transitioned Forge to a consumption‑based pricing model. High‑scale usage of Compute and SQL now incurs cost, aligning Forge more closely with enterprise workloads.

While this introduces new considerations for vendors, it also unlocks more powerful, scalable app architectures — and signals Atlassian’s long‑term commitment to Cloud‑native extensibility.

Events in 2026: don’t skip Team ‘26

A highlight of the year will undoubtedly be Team ‘26 , Atlassian’s flagship conference, taking place in Anaheim, California. Team brings together thousands of Atlassian users, partners, developers, and community leaders for product announcements, roadmap insights, hands‑on sessions, and real customer stories.

We’re excited to confirm that we’ll be there - meeting customers, showcasing our apps, and exchanging ideas about what modern collaboration really looks like.

Beyond Team ‘26, Atlassian Community Events (ACEs) continue to play a vital role locally. These meetups remain one of the best ways to learn from peers, share experiences, and influence how the ecosystem evolves.

What’s Coming for Our Apps in 2026

Alongside ecosystem changes, we’re investing heavily in the next evolution of our apps.

Approval Path for Jira and Confluence

In 2026, Approval Path apps become more dynamic and more visual. We’re introducing flexible, dynamic approval steps, a workflow‑style UI builder for designing approval logic, and support for approval expiration and renewal, ensuring decisions stay valid over time, not just at the moment they’re made.

External Share for Confluence

External Share continues to focus on controlled collaboration at scale. Planned enhancements include smart link support, per‑client page customization, SSO configuration per share, and support for the most widely used Confluence macros, making shared pages feel native, branded, and secure for every audience.

Contract Signatures for Jira and Confluence

We’re improving communication inside the signing process itself. Signers will be able to send messages directly to contract creators, reducing back‑and‑forth and keeping the full audit trail inside Confluence.

Macro Pack for Confluence

Macro Pack grows into a richer content toolkit. Upcoming features include a headers numbering module, a calendar macro, survey components, and a growing set of UI elements such as buttons, accordions, cards, badges, and more.

We’re also expanding integrations and formats:

• New OAuth integrations (Google Drive, AWS S3, OneDrive, Dropbox, S/FTP) - some are already there :)

• Support for additional file types (PDF, Word, Excel, Miro, Excalidraw) - in progress

• Advanced export options for pages and spaces (Markdown, HTML, JSON, CSV, XML - with CQL‑based selection)

What to expect

2026 isn’t just another year on the roadmap - it’s a convergence point. Cloud maturity, AI execution, platform restructuring, and community‑driven innovation are all accelerating at once.

We’re excited to keep building alongside you, learning from real use cases, and shaping tools that help teams collaborate with clarity, confidence, and control.

If 2025 was about momentum, 2026 is about impact.

See you in the Cloud… and in Anaheim!