Global Occupancy Planning Benchmark Report 2026

• Data infrastructure takes centre stage: Improving space data accuracy has risen to the #2 corporate real estate priority as organisations recognise that AI-powered planning tools will only be as good as the data that feeds them. The 73% with data governance programmes in place have a meaningful head start.
  
  
• AI adoption remains early, but preparation is accelerating: Most organisations (70%) have not yet begun their AI journey, remaining either in a research phase or not exploring options at all, with privacy concerns (70%) dominating barriers. Yet the shift to advanced analytics platforms like Power BI (51%) and Databricks (14%) signals organisations are building AI-ready infrastructure.
  
  
• Utilisation gaps narrow for the first time: Global utilisation reached 56%, and the actual-to-target gap narrowed from 25 to 18 percentage points as organisations set more realistic expectations. Office mandates (64% report increased utilisation) prove the most effective strategy.
  
  
• Hybrid work structures harden: 62% now require fixed in-office days, up from 49% in 2025, and 70% of employees attend three to five days per week. But organisations with change management programmes have declined to 31%, risking compliance without engagement.
  
  
• Workspaces shift from assigned to shared: Private offices continue declining as phone booths, focus rooms, and small meeting rooms rise in their place. Knowing if these investments work requires space-level utilisation data—not just building-level badge counts.
  
  
• Technical spaces reach an inflection point: Representing 23% of portfolios yet sitting at just 45% utilisation against a 72% target, technical spaces demand equipment-centric metrics and specialised partners who understand environments where the primary tenant is a lab bench, not a person.
   

As corporate real estate teams navigate the twin imperatives of portfolio efficiency and workforce experience, the ability to make data-driven decisions has shifted from competitive advantage to baseline requirement.

JLL's Global Occupancy Planning Benchmark Report 2026 — drawing from 84 organisations representing 716 million square feet across North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific—reveals an industry at a critical juncture. Organisations are no longer just tracking space. They are building the data foundations required to move from reactive planning to predictive intelligence.

What makes this year's findings particularly compelling is not a single breakthrough, but the convergence of trends that signal occupancy planning's maturation as a strategic discipline. The data reveals where organisations are succeeding, where persistent gaps remain, and most importantly, what separates leaders from laggards in translating space data into competitive advantage.

Top occupancy planning objectives in corporate real estate

Portfolio optimisation has held its position as the top corporate real estate objective for the third consecutive year, cited by 71% of respondents in 2026. But the most telling shift lies one rank lower: improving space data accuracy has moved to #2, and improving reporting has risen to #3, displacing the cost-reduction priorities that dominated prior years.

This meaningful shift signals that organisations believe effective real estate strategy begins with trustworthy data. As AI-powered analytics tools move from aspiration to active procurement conversations, the quality of underlying data has become a strategic differentiator.

Adoption in occupancy planning remains in its earliest stages. Just 8% of organisations have progressed beyond pilot programmes to active optimisation or scaling, while more than 70% have yet to begin implementation, either conducting preliminary research or not yet exploring AI applications.

According to JLL’s Global State of Facilities Management Report 2025, facility management teams are further along at every stage, most notably at scaling where FM sits at 16% compared to just 2% for occupancy planning, reflecting the higher bar for AI readiness inoccupancy planning where results depend on clean, integrated space data that most organisations are still working to build.

The barriers are significant and specific. Privacy concerns are the dominant obstacle, cited by 70% of organisations, more than one and a half times the next closest barrier. High cost (46%) and system compatibility (45%) follow as near-equal secondary concerns.

The technology platform landscape is shifting in ways that signal preparation: Power BI has overtaken Tableau as the leading analytics platform at 51% vs 42%, and Databricks has emerged at14%, a more sophisticated platform capable of supporting machine learning workloads.

With improved occupancy planning and continued return-to-office efforts, office utilisation has risen globally to 56%, up from 54% in 2025 and 49% in 2024, inching closer to the pre-pandemic level of 61%. All regions excluding EMEA have increased utilisation since 2023; EMEA declining 3 percentage points from 58% to 55% in 2026. Latin America has shown the strongest two-year gain, rising 10 percentage points.

For the first time since tracking began, the gap between actual and target utilisation has narrowed, from 25 percentage points in both 2024 and 2025, to 18 percentage points in 2026. This narrowing reflects both a 2-point rise in actual utilisation and a 5-point decrease in target utilisation, as organisations set more realistic expectations rather than simply waiting for employees to close the gap.

Hybrid programme prevalence has rebounded to 80% of organisations in 2026, up from 77% in 2025, though still below the 2024 high of 87%. Structurally, 62% of organisations now require a fixed number of in-office days, up from 49% in both 2024 and 2025, and just 28% in 2022. Fully flexible approaches have declined further to 14%, down from 15% in 2025 and 40% in 2022.

Change management programmes have declined from 40% in 2025 to 31% in 2026. As organisations shift from persuading employees to requiring their presence, investment in supporting them through the transition may feel less urgent, but the data suggests otherwise.

Structured attendance without the behavioural scaffolding to support it produces compliance, not engagement, and organisations that close this gap will see stronger long-term utilisation outcomes.

The 2026 data reveals the single largest year-over-year shift in in-office attendance frequency in three years of benchmark data. The share of employees attending the office three to four days per week surged from 36% to 55%, a 19-percentage-point increase in a single year, driven by a corresponding decline in one-to-two-day attendance (31% →20%) and a reduction in fully remote workers (18% → 10%). Globally, 70% of employees are now in the office three to five days per week.

Technical spaces—laboratories, manufacturing and distribution facilities, warehousing, data centres, SCIF environments, and other specialised space types—represent a critical component of corporate real estate portfolios. Of the organisations supported by JLL Occupancy Planning and Management, 51 accounts manage 110.5 million square feet of technical space within portfolios totaling 486 million square feet, representing nearly 23% of all managed space.

These are among the most expensive and operationally complex space types in any portfolio, and the 2026 data signals that organisations are treating them accordingly. Data shows a surge in utilisation tracking participation from 5% to 26%, a 21-percentage-point increase in a single year. This growth reflects rising organisational commitment to understanding and optimising technical environments that have historically received far less planning attention than traditional office space.

The organisations that will lead in the next era of occupancy planning are those investing in data quality and governance infrastructure today. AI-powered tools promise to transform how portfolios are planned, optimised, and managed—but only for those who have built the data foundations these tools require.

Improving space data accuracy is not a preliminary task to complete before the real work begins. It is the real work. The gap between actual and target utilisation is narrowing not because employees suddenly changed their minds about hybrid work, but because organisations set more realistic targets and implemented structured programmes backed by reliable data. The most effective utilisation strategies—office mandates, design changes, footprint reductions—all depend on knowing what is actually happening in your buildings, not what you assume is happening.

The window for competitive advantage is open, but it is not indefinite. Organisations that act now to audit their data quality and implement governance frameworks will not just be ready for AI — they will be positioned to lead with it.