By Tony Grout, Chief Product Officer, M-Files

As we look toward 2026, one thing feels certain: the organizations that will win aren’t just the ones adopting AI. They’re the ones that can connect people, processes, and content into a living system that eliminates operational friction and unlocks a real performance advantage.

At M-Files, our mission is to help customers do exactly that. We’re helping businesses make the shift to Context-First Document Management, where information works in context, not in isolation. Documents, data, and decisions flow together naturally, empowering humans and AI to work side by side.

Here are five trends I see shaping that journey in 2026 for M-Files, our customers, and the future of intelligent work.

1. The Rise of Unified AI Experiences

For most organizations, Microsoft is the foundation of digital work, with Copilot, Purview and the broader M365 stack becoming the default operating system for enterprise AI. Deep knowledge-graph intelligence combined with generative AI will create a secure, compliant, and frictionless experiences across the digital workplace.

That’s why we’re investing in deeper, smarter integration between M-Files Aino and Microsoft Copilot. In 2026, you’ll see these two AI assistants operate as one: sharing context, understanding relationships, and helping users get answers faster without switching tools.

Our goal isn’t to compete for control of the user experience; it’s to remove friction. Whether you start in Teams, Outlook, or M-Files, you’ll get the same trusted insights drawn from your organization’s knowledge graph. AI will simply feel part of process, not an extra step.

2. AI Will Become Invisible and Actually Useful

In 2026 we'll see a shift from AI as a feature, to AI that is simply part of the flow of work, ensuring compliance at every step and anticipating the next action seamlessly and securely.

Our expanded collaboration with Microsoft Purview is one way we're meeting this trend to deliver governance without friction: automated, consistent, and invisible.

Through M-Files’ context-first architecture, organizations can apply retention, sensitivity, and access controls automatically; ensuring information is always used with integrity.

The result is a world where compliance isn’t a chore or a checklist; it’s simply how work happens.

3. Job-Specific AI Experiences Become the New Differentiator

Horizontal AI alone won't cut it anymore. Organizations will demand tailored experiences aligned to specific roles and tasks their teams perform. These verticalized solutions should anticipate users' needs and surface insight proactively.

In 2026, you’ll see M-Files vertical experiences take center stage: purpose-built for how people work in fields like financial services, manufacturing, professional services, and life sciences. Powered by our Workspaces capability, these experiences will connect content, processes, and analytics in meaningful ways, giving users a context-first, AI-ready environment that feels custom-built for their daily work.

And this isn’t just about personalization; it’s about decision velocity. By surfacing insights and priorities right inside M-Files, we’re helping users focus on what matters most, when it matters most.

4. Product-Led Growth (PLG) Comes to Enterprise Systems

Technology only creates value when people use it confidently and consistently. Businesses often don't have the people, budget or patience to implement and train employees on complex applications. Instead, expectations are shifting for systems to onboard and train users automatically.

That’s why we’re leaning into product-led growth, embedding self-guided onboarding, tutorials, and in-product intelligence directly into M-Files. Our aim is to help admins and users unlock new capabilities the moment they go live with no lengthy manuals, no external training sessions.

Because a truly context-first experience doesn’t just manage information, it helps people grow with it.

5. Trust Will Become the #1 AI Battleground

There’s no shortage of hype around AI, but the future belongs to trusted, practical AI, the kind that helps people work smarter, not harder. Next year, we'll see companies demand verifiable provenance, strict data boundaries and clear guardrails around autonomous actions.

At M-Files, we’re focused on AI with context: intelligence grounded in secure, structured, and meaningful information. With our context-first foundation, AI understands relationships between clients, projects, and processes, making its decisions accurate, transparent, and explainable.

Trust will define the next era of AI. Trust in where your data lives. Trust in how it’s governed. And trust that AI is helping your business operate with integrity.

That’s why context isn’t optional, it’s essential.

Looking Ahead: The Context-First Era

The next few years will mark a turning point for information management. The organizations that thrive will be the ones that treat documents as living assets, not static files and those that embrace context as the key to performance, agility, and AI success.

At M-Files, we’re helping our customers make that shift: from document chaos to clarity, from manual control to automation, from disconnected systems to a connected, intelligent foundation for work.

2026 will be an exciting year. We’re ready to help every organization eliminate friction, build trust, and move confidently into the age of context-first productivity.

Because when every document lives in context, work happens at the speed of intelligence.