About the paper
The report examines how PR professionals see the industry’s challenges, priorities, opportunities, skills and AI use heading into 2026.
It is an original survey-based report drawing on responses from 561 industry professionals collected in September and October 2025 across the U.S. and UK; respondents came from different job levels and organisational settings, including agencies, in-house teams, nonprofits and the public sector.
The methodology is clearly stated, though the report is based on a self-selected survey distributed through Cision’s customer/subscriber database, newsletters and social channels.
Length: 40 pages
More information/download:
https://www.cision.com/resources/guides-and-reports/2026-inside-pr-report/
Core Insights
1. What does the report say are the biggest pressures reshaping PR right now and into 2026?
The report’s core argument is that PR is being reshaped by a mix of external disruption and internal constraint. Right now, the top challenges are the changing media landscape, cited by 60% of respondents, and resource pressures, cited by 58%, with AI and automation close behind at 50%. That means the profession is being squeezed from several directions at once: media roles are blurring, budgets are tight, and teams are expected to adapt quickly to new technologies.
Looking specifically ahead to 2026, resource pressures become the single biggest anticipated challenge, selected by 34% of respondents, followed by the changing media landscape at 21% and AI and automation at 18%. So the report suggests that, while media disruption remains highly important, many PR teams believe the more immediate pain point will be practical capacity: doing more with less, with leaner teams and tighter budgets.
The report also shows that these pressures are experienced differently depending on role and organisational type. Executives are more focused on the media landscape, while managers are more likely to name resource pressures. Agency teams are more likely to emphasise external disruption, especially the changing media landscape and AI, whereas in-house teams are more likely to highlight internal operational strain, especially resource pressures and demands for data-driven strategy. That distinction matters because it shows there is no single PR reality; the sector is fragmented by business model and seniority.
2. How does the report portray the gap between PR’s ambitions and its operational reality?
A major theme in the report is that PR teams may think they are agile, but many structural factors prevent them from acting with real speed. Overall, 57% of respondents describe their teams as “very” or “extremely agile”, which sounds positive at first glance. But the report immediately complicates that picture by showing that executives rate their teams as “extremely agile” at roughly twice the rate of other colleagues. In other words, leadership appears more optimistic than those closer to day-to-day execution.
The underlying barriers are fairly concrete. Sixty-three percent cite team size and structure as an obstacle to agility, and 53% point to slow executive decision-making. The report uses this to argue that agility is not just a cultural aspiration; it depends on organisational design, approval processes and access to timely information. That is an important analytical point, because it reframes agility from a vague buzzword into an operational issue.
Again, agency and in-house teams diverge. Agency respondents are more likely to see team size and structure as the main barrier, while in-house teams are especially hindered by lack of real-time data. Agency respondents are also much more likely to cite skill diversity and access to the right tools and technology as obstacles. The implication is that PR’s effectiveness increasingly depends on whether organisations remove friction from the system rather than simply asking teams to work faster.
3. What priorities and opportunities are PR teams focusing on for 2026, and what does that reveal about the direction of the profession?
The report shows a profession trying to balance traditional communications goals with growing pressure to prove business value. Brand awareness remains the dominant priority, named by 73% of respondents as a top priority and by 36% as the single top priority. But driving sales and revenue through PR is also highly prominent, named by 55% as a top priority and 26% as the single top priority. PR measurement and ROI follows at 50%.
That combination reveals an important shift. Brand building is still central, but the report suggests that communicators are under stronger pressure to connect PR activity to measurable commercial outcomes. Executives are more concerned than others with driving sales and revenue, while agencies also lean more heavily towards revenue and ROI than in-house teams, which remain more focused on brand awareness. The report interprets this as a possible misalignment between leadership expectations and how practitioners define PR’s core value.
On the opportunity side, AI and automation lead clearly at 48%, followed by strengthening journalist and creator relationships at 39%, closer alignment with marketing and business strategy at 32%, and data and analytics to demonstrate ROI at 31%. This is one of the report’s most revealing sections, because it shows the future of PR being defined by two simultaneous moves: more technology and more integration with business strategy, without abandoning relationship-building. The direction of travel is not simply “more AI”; it is a more hybrid model where technology supports efficiency and insight, while human connection and strategic alignment remain essential.
4. Which tools and skills does the report identify as most important, and what does that suggest about what successful PR work will look like?
The toolset that respondents value most is led by media monitoring and analysis, cited by 60%, followed by content creation tools at 49% and media database or relationship management tools at 44%. Analytics and reporting dashboards and press release distribution both sit at 33%. This indicates that successful PR work is increasingly built on a mix of intelligence gathering, content production and relationship infrastructure.
The organisational split is telling here as well. Agency teams place much higher value on media database and relationship management tools, while in-house teams place more emphasis on content creation. That makes sense within the report’s logic: agencies need broad contact networks across multiple clients and sectors, while in-house teams are more focused on brand storytelling and owned content.
On skills, storytelling and content creation come first at 59%, followed by media relations at 44%, strategic planning at 34%, and AI integration at 33%. ROI measurement is lower down at 21%, which is striking given how much the report emphasises pressure to prove impact. That suggests the field still sees core communicative craft as more central than technical evaluation skill, even as accountability expectations rise.
Overall, the report presents the ideal PR professional of 2026 as someone who combines creative and relational strengths with strategic and analytical capability. The future winner is not just a storyteller, and not just a data person, but someone who can connect narratives to business outcomes while using new tools intelligently.
5. What does the report conclude about AI’s role in PR, and what broader conclusion does it draw about the future of the profession?
AI is presented as both a pressure point and a major opportunity. The report says 40% of respondents use AI-powered media monitoring tools and 31% use AI features in analytics and reporting dashboards. When it comes to stand-alone generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, use is already widespread: 73% use them for brainstorming ideas, 68% for writing or refining press releases, pitches or other content, 55% for research, 36% for drafting or scheduling social posts, and 31% for analysing data or generating reports. Only 8% say they do not use generative AI tools.
That makes AI a mainstream workflow reality rather than an emerging experiment. But the report is careful not to frame this as a fully automated future. Its repeated position is that human creativity, storytelling and relationships remain indispensable. AI is valuable for efficiency, insight and scale, but it does not replace the human dimensions that make PR effective.
The broader conclusion is that PR is moving into a more demanding, more hybrid era. The profession must adapt to unstable media dynamics, economic pressure and growing performance expectations, while also absorbing AI into everyday practice. The teams most likely to succeed, according to the report, will be those that align strategy and execution, remove structural barriers to agility, strengthen storytelling and data capabilities, and combine machine efficiency with human authenticity. In that sense, the report’s ultimate message is not that PR is being reinvented from scratch, but that its traditional strengths now have to operate inside a far more data-driven, resource-constrained and technology-enabled environment.