With 2025 seeing the mega-merger between Omnicom and IPG now complete, WPP consolidating its media agencies under WPP Media, and more consolidations in the pipeline, for our year-ender series, we asked experts to share 'the one consolidation they see happening in 2026'.

Here's what Sudish Balan, co-founder and chief creative officer, Tonic Worldwide, had to say:

2026 will not be the year agencies shrink. It will be the year the industry reorganises itself around intelligence. Consolidation in the creative world will come from a shift in how we work, what we value, and how creativity gets delivered.

The first shift will be a consolidation of skills rather than headcounts. The traditional silos, like creative, digital, media and content, will start disappearing. Brands will not focus on who made the work. They will focus on who understood the problem better. Smaller, high-output teams will emerge where strategy, storytelling, data and automation work together. AI will take over the repetitive work, and humans will double down on core craft because as sameness becomes cheap, originality becomes priceless.

The second shift will be in technology. Agencies will realise that chasing twenty tools is not a strategy. They will consolidate into one intelligence stack of their own. A single system that holds brand memory, accelerates production, improves consistency and allows imagination to operate at a higher altitude. The agencies that win will be the ones that treat AI as infrastructure, not as an experiment.

The third shift will be a consolidation of value. Clients are already moving away from paying for sheer volume. They want measurable outcomes and creative ideas that lead to behavioural impact. In 2026, this pressure will only intensify. Agencies that survive will be the ones that can prove that creativity is not ornamental. It moves people. It shapes decisions. It influences business.

The bottom line is simple. Consolidation in 2026 will not be about big agencies acquiring small ones. It will be about creative companies consolidating their purpose, their intelligence and their ability to create meaningful outcomes. The ones that thrive will be hybrids. Part imagination. Part engineering. Part behavioural science. Built on a foundation of AI but still powered by human insight.

Also read:

'Brands are consolidating their trust, budgets, long-term partnerships with independent agencies'