JournalismAI’s 2025 impact and 2026 vision
A snapshot of our 2025 reflections as we look ahead to programmes and opportunities in 2026
Every year we take a moment to celebrate our global community and the work we’ve done together. As we start a new chapter of our annual programming cycle, we are proud to share everything we achieved in 2025 and what 2026 has in store.
This work is made possible through the unwavering support of the Google News Initiative, and we are incredibly proud of what we have achieved together.
Surpassing our goals in 2025
With seven years of supporting responsible adoption of AI and capacity building, it is encouraging to see an expanding range of other organisations providing programmes helping newsrooms and giving journalists more choices in how they learn. Even with this growing ecosystem, demand for our initiatives remains higher than ever. Last year, we set an ambitious target: to train at least 4,500 journalists from 100 countries in five languages across our various programmes. We are proud to share that we exceeded those expectations, training over 4,800 journalists from more than 115 countries.
Here are some of the highlights from 2025:
We launched a new technical programme to strengthen the skills of editorial staff. You can read more here about the innovative tools produced by this inaugural cohort.
We expanded the Academy to include newsrooms of all sizes, moving beyond our previous focus on small publishers only.
For the first time in six years, we hosted our annual JournalismAI Festival as a hybrid event, bringing our community together both in-person and online. Catch up on all the sessions here.
These programmes and their achievements are detailed in our Impact Report below.
Our mission for 2026
While the adoption of AI globally is accelerating, access remains far from equal. Since 2018, we’ve worked hard to bridge this gap, yet the divide persists. For 2026, we are critically re-evaluating our programmes to ensure they meet you where you are.
Our goal for 2026 is to train 5,400 journalists from 100 countries in four languages.
Informed by your feedback and the shifts reshaping the industry, our programmes are evolving. From this year, we have renamed two of our most loved programmes:
JournalismAI Academy → JournalismAI Strategy Lab
JournalismAI Discovery → JournalismAI Discovery Lab
These new names reflect the changing landscape where the question is no longer whether to use AI, but how to use it well.
What’s coming in 2026
Expansion of Strategy Lab: You will have seen our call for the first Strategy Lab programme targeted at publishers of all sizes in Central and Eastern Europe. We will soon open applications for sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America (conducted in Spanish).
JournalismAI in Spanish. After a successful quiet pilot, we are officially launching our Spanish-language growth programme. Our goal is to build a space that fosters collaboration and development in the Ibero-American region to innovate at the intersection of AI and journalism. Visit this new webpage for more details.
New global research report. Building on our landmark 2019 and 2023 reports, we will publish a comprehensive new global study in the second half of this year. Expect fresh insights and real-world experiments from newsrooms around the globe.
The JournalismAI Festival 2026. Our 7th annual gathering returns in a hybrid format. Stay tuned for dates and location announcements as we prepare to celebrate the most exciting developments in the field.
Other updates to expect this year include:
Following last year’s successful pilot, the JournalismAI Skills Lab will return with targeted programmatic improvements. We will run two concurrent cohorts, one global and another for publishers in the Asia Pacific region. Look out for the call for applications in May.
We are launching the English and Spanish versions of the Discovery Lab for Beginners on our new e-learning platform, giving you on-demand access to the material at your convenience. An advanced version will follow later this year.
We will host more community events this year. Sign up to our newsletter or join our global Slack community so you do not miss out.
Find us on BlueSky, LinkedIn and Instagram under PolisLSE.
Here’s to another year of innovation, equity and impactful journalism.