Forrester’s 2026 Marketing Agency Predictions - Are you Prepared?
Forrester’s 2026 Marketing Agency Predictions make for uncomfortable reading, but not surprising reading, for anyone who has spent long enough inside this industry to recognise when a model is running out of road.
Agencies are not dying, but evolving
Forrester are forecasting that 15% of agency jobs will disappear in 2026, coming hard on the heels of an estimated 8% loss in 2025, and while numbers like that always sound abstract at first, they represent real people, real careers, and real identities tied up in a version of the agency world that no longer fits the environment it is operating in.
Forrester’s argument is not that agencies are dying, but that the idea of the agency as we have known it for decades is being quietly dismantled by forces that have been building for years: project work replacing retainers, clients bringing capability in-house, procurement exerting downward pressure on value, holding company consolidation, and now AI accelerating everything that was already unstable.
In their words, agencies are evolving from client-focused representatives to diversified marketing solution providers, selling execution, managed services, proprietary products and strategic partnerships, a change that sounds subtle on paper but in reality demands a completely different mindset about what an agency actually is and how it earns its living.
Consolidation
Forrester also report expectations of further consolidation at the top of the market, with another major holding company deal likely in 2026, potentially involving Dentsu, WPP or Havas, and with each large merger triggering waves of client reviews that quietly ripple through the system long after the headlines fade.
Jay Pattisall at Forrester puts it plainly "agencies are no longer just agents, they are becoming owners, resellers, consultants and partners, evolving from intermediaries into technology-enabled businesses that sell products as much as they sell people"
None of this means the end of creativity or the end of agencies, but it does mark the end of the comfort blanket of time-based billing and the assumption that talent alone is enough, at a moment when AI is making those assumptions harder to defend by the month.
The uncomfortable truth is that survival will belong less to the biggest or the loudest and more to those willing to let go of old identities, rethink how they create value, and become more entrepreneurial in what they build and sell.
That is not an easy transition, but it is a far better option than sitting still and waiting for disruption to make the decision for you.
Source: Forrester, 2026 Marketing Agency Predictions. Original reporting by Stephen Foster.
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