Malt Tech
Trends 2026
How Europe’s top independent talents are shaping the tech landscape.
Our research is based on 2,5 million searches on the Malt platform across our community of 1 million freelancers, including 250,000 tech freelancers, and +90,000 companies.
The 2026 tech trends deep-dives
Cloud & Infra
It is now AI-driven cloud evolution, with AI workloads cost exploding.
Cloud & Infra
From migration to AI-driven cost and architecture
Organizations are now architecting specifically for AI workloads rather than general-purpose migration. Generative AI on Cloud demand rose +96%, while LLM-specific infrastructure projects increased by +154%.AI workloads have also driven FinOps from a peripheral exercise into a core engineering mandate, with +72% in dedicated projects.
Data platform
The data landscape is moving from analytics usage to operational focus.
Data platform
Balancing between consolidation and innovation
The 'best-of-breed' era in Business Intelligence is ending. Organizations are stopping the multi-tool headache and consolidating around ecosystems like never before. Power BI now commands over one-third of all demand— 3.5 times its nearest competitor. Meanwhile, Tableau demand has decreased by 46%. It’s a massive shift toward Microsoft's integrated stack
Cybersecurity
With AI penetration, security is at the core of any tech project.
Cybersecurity
A convergence crisis, driven by AI, is reshaping the GRC landscape
The significant growth in GRC demand — +31% ISO-27001, +229% ISO 7816, coupled with slower growth in the number of freelancers, has led to strong market tension and a scarcity of talent in the cybersecurity domain.
Adding to this, the rise of AI is forcing a rapid evolution of both the discipline and the required profiles.
Low-Code
Automation and low-code tools now empowering senior tech experts.
Low-Code
Low-code tools are now empowering tech experts, while software programming landscape is transforming.
AI
Agentic maturity is the most significant signal in our 2026 data.
AI
The rise of agentic systems marks the shift from "AI that answers questions" to "AI that completes tasks." Autonomous systems now reason through workflows, use tools, and execute actions independently across multiple steps.
3 top trends for 2026 :
from agentic maturity to tech fractional leadership
How freelancers are leading the tech skill-shift
The Malt Tech Quadrant
AI agent skill demand was multiplied by 60 vs 2024 and replaces RAG in its position on the quadrant.
RAG demand remains stable in term of volume and still grows (x3) in the same order of magnitude than more established technologies.
Demand for low-code workflow automation tools exploded in 2025. n8n is by far the most popular on Malt, with a demand level as high as Java.
Demand on established programming languages and frameworks (Java, PHP, JavaScript, C++, C#...) remains high but tends to stagnate or slowly evolve.
AI & automation skills are what companies are asking for
Unsurprisingly, the 3 low-code workflow automation solutions most cited in 2025 are maintaining their position in the top 10. Due to its growth and its volume of demand and supply, n8n seems to be the category winner.
The fact that it is an open-source solution, can be deployed on-premise, and offers simple and powerful integration features with LLMs appears to have won over the small and medium-sized enterprise market.
The Malt Tech Skills Index
Top skills companies are asking for the most
Top skills freelancers are growing the most
The Malt Tech Skills Index: top skills companies are asking for the most
In volume, based on project desc.
- Wordpress
- Artificial Intelligence
- Python
- React.js
- Webflow
Demand evolution
- -11%
- +125%
- -3%
- -16%
- +4%
Supply evolution
- -31%
- +59%
- -13%
- -16%
- -13%
Tech Experts' favorite report
Malt's community of one million freelancers acts as a high-resolution sensor for the tech economy. From JavaScript to n8n, the market is moving away from traditional programming toward automation and agentic infrastructure.
Explore Tech experts on Malt
What market experts say
Organizations still approach agentic AI through isolated use cases, instead of defining a clear vision and investing in the right foundations.
The role of AI leaders is no longer to manage delivery, but to build those foundations: skills, processes, and platforms that enable autonomous systems to create value at scale.
It’s an exciting time: data platforms are entering a new dimension with DBT’s industrialized transformation, Analytics Engineering became a real discipline, and data platforms expanding beyond analytics into real-time operations.
It is a strong signal that they have become critical infrastructure for operational use-cases and AI at scale.
The question is no more what we will do with AI, but what will not be done through AI.
The rise of AI agents is undeniable, as shown in the demand uplift, and their orchestration through new frameworks like n8n is a must for companies to fully benefit from this game changer and not drown in agentic chaos.
