The 2026 Strategic Report Guidance: embracing digital, sustainability, and good practice

A new world

In an end-of-the-year article, The Guardian stated that “the best we can say about 2014 is that it was the year when we finally began to have a glimmer of what the internet might mean for society. It has evolved from an exotic curiosity into the mundane underpinning of our lives – a general-purpose technology or GPT.”  The 2026 Guidance on the Strategic Report recognises a world where information is primarily consumed digitally, with a growing appetite for deeper insights into sustainability. This shift is driven by the government’s “Modernising Corporate Reporting” initiative, introduced in October 2025.

The FRC recognised that the previous framework had become a complex “checklist,” often resulting in reports that felt cluttered rather than insightful. As sustainability-related reporting standards, including those from the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), continue to develop, companies are seeking a clearer way to connect their environmental impacts with their financial outlook. Additionally, since reports are often viewed as PDFs or iXBRL files—accessible to both algorithms and people—the new guidance emphasises digital accessibility and searchability, making reports easier to find and understand.

A new rulebook

The FRC’s new guidance offers a fresh perspective. Moving away from the strict “best practice” advice of the 2022 guidance, the 2026 version now provides more flexible “good practice” guidance, encouraging directors to use their own judgment. Unlike the previous structure, which was organised by entity type, the 2026 update is grouped into three clear themes: strategic management (focusing on how the entity creates and sustains value), the business environment (examining internal and external factors affecting the entity), and business performance and position (highlighting how the entity performs throughout the year and at year-end).

Rather than requiring every company, big or small, to include specific disclosures, the new Guidance promotes a proportionate approach. Each theme begins with a handy scoping table that shows which disclosure requirements apply to different types of entities in that theme. This keeps the guidance straightforward and much easier to navigate, while also making better use of the FRC’s website. To ensure the Guidance stays current, the details of the scoping tables are kept online, making it simple to update them—such as adjusting legal thresholds—without rewriting the entire manual.

What this means in practice

Companies will approach their reports differently. The 2026 Guidance aligns the strategic report more closely with the UK Corporate Governance Code 2024 and highlights emerging risks. Emphasising threats that are hard to quantify but could have major future impacts will require a more forward-looking strategic narrative than is currently typical.

There will also be a stricter focus on materiality. The new Guidance updates the definition of “material information” to align with international IFRS standards. Companies are now specifically warned against obscuring important information with excessive “boilerplate” or immaterial detail. This will require being clear about who your investors and broader stakeholders are, their objectives and motivations, and therefore the information they need or expect.

So far, so fair, balanced and understandable, but the Guidance adds new communication principles to the reporting toolkit: comparability, accessibility, and verifiability. Boards are now encouraged to provide information that can be easily corroborated, thereby supporting higher levels of shareholder confidence. Amid growing economic uncertainty and scepticism towards corporations, this shift is understandable. People expect to see evidence for purpose-led claims and proof of strategic success. Additionally, unless AI-enabled queries are met with comparable information that can be confirmed, your reported narrative may not be what the user gets from the algorithm.

Ultimately, the 2026 Guidance on the Strategic Report is designed to help companies move away from a compliance exercise and towards communicating a meaningful picture of their prospects.

If you’d like to discuss this, or any other subject, please get in touch with Richard Costa, Consultancy Director, at richardc@gather.london

We’d love to know what you think.