Every year we write down what changed on the Anaplan platform and what it means for the customers we work with. This is the 2026 edition. If you planned your Anaplan roadmap in 2022 or 2023, several of the assumptions it rests on are out of date.
The company
Anaplan has been a private company since Thoma Bravo completed its acquisition in 2022 (a deal valued at roughly $10.4 billion). The practical effect for customers has been a sharper product focus and a faster pace of acquisitions and releases than the public-company years. In May 2024 Anaplan acquired Fluence Technologies, a financial close, consolidation, and disclosure-management vendor, extending the platform into the controller's office. The Integrated Financial Planning (IFP) application followed in October 2024, connecting income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow planning in one packaged model.
What it means: Anaplan is now competing for the whole office of the CFO, not only FP&A. If you run close and consolidation in a separate tool and plan in Anaplan, the integration between them is now a product conversation, not just a custom build. See our Office of the CFO service.
Two calculation engines
Polaris, Anaplan's calculation engine for very large, sparse models, has matured from an early-access option into a production engine that coexists with the original Hyperblock engine. Function coverage has expanded release by release, and the tooling around it (ALM, New UX, integrations) has caught up.
What it means: engine selection is now part of solution design. Dense financial models generally stay on Hyperblock; sparse operational models (SKU by customer, part by plant, assortment) increasingly belong on Polaris. Migration is a rebuild with reconciliation, not a switch. Our model builder's guide covers the decision.
AI: Forecaster and agents
On October 20, 2025, Anaplan launched Anaplan Forecaster, the next generation of PlanIQ, with expanded machine-learning algorithms, materially faster training, and explainability designed for planners. On December 9, 2025, Anaplan announced a suite of role-based AI agents under the Anaplan Intelligence banner, intended to surface insights, draft scenarios, and recommend actions within planning processes.
What it means: the "should we try AI forecasting" conversation is over; the question is which series are ready and how to govern the outputs. Forecaster is worth a backtest on any demand or revenue model with two years of history. Agents need a governance design (who sees, who acts, what is logged) before a pilot, not after. We go into both in AI-Powered Planning with Anaplan Intelligence and in a separate post on AI agents in enterprise planning.
Integration: Data Orchestrator is the center of gravity
Anaplan Data Orchestrator has become the platform's primary integration story, with prebuilt connectors to enterprise sources such as SAP, Salesforce, and Snowflake, transformation, and scheduling handled outside of planning models. CloudWorks remains the lightweight scheduler and cloud-storage mover, and Anaplan Connect and the REST API remain available for scripted and platform-driven integration.
What it means: the Data Hub model pattern is now a legacy pattern. It still works, but new implementations should not start with one, and existing estates should plan a pipeline-by-pipeline migration. Our tutorial on choosing between Data Orchestrator, CloudWorks, and Connect has a decision matrix and a migration checklist.
The front end: New UX and Workflow
The New UX is the platform interface; Classic dashboards are maintained but receive no new features. Anaplan Workflow has matured into a real process tool: tasks, approvals, conditional routing, due dates, and status tracking inside the app.
What it means: if you still run Classic dashboards, 2026 is the year to move; see our migration guide. If your budget process still runs on email and "Submitted?" checkboxes, Workflow replaces that with something auditable; see building approval chains with Workflow.
What has not changed
Anaplan is still a multi-tenant SaaS platform with continuous releases. There is no version to upgrade and never has been; any vendor promising to "upgrade your Anaplan version" is telling you something about their experience. Model structure still determines performance (the DISCO discipline applies on both engines). Security is still configured by the customer, which is why we publish a hardening checklist. And the biggest cause of failed projects is still unclear process ownership, not technology; see why Anaplan projects fail.
A roadmap for 2026
If we were writing a generic plan for an established Anaplan customer this year, it would look like this:
- Q1: security and access review; Forecaster backtest on the top demand or revenue series; Data Hub pipeline inventory.
- Q2: Classic-to-New UX migration for the highest-traffic process; Workflow for the budget cycle.
- Q3: Polaris readiness assessment on the largest sparse model; first Data Orchestrator pipelines in production.
- Q4: AI agent pilot under a governance design; IFP evaluation if close and plan are still disconnected.
Your sequence will differ. If you would like help setting it, contact us for a roadmap session. We will update this post as the platform changes.