The coaching industry
ICF Thought Leadership Institute · January 2026 · Free to read
2026 ICF Coaching Futures Report: Envisioning Coaching’s Next Horizon
ICF’s first futures report uses strategic foresight, not prediction, to explore five drivers of change and four possible futures for coaching by 2036.
Also listed under AI & technology for coaches.
Most industry reports describe the present. This one asks what coaching could look like by 2036. ICF is explicit that the four futures are not forecasts.
The drivers it explores include collaborative ecosystems, economic disruption, technological acceleration, globalisation and cultural intelligence, and regulation and trust in expertise.
We adjusted the usual ‘2030’ question to 2036 because that is the horizon the report actually uses. Stretching it would have been tidier and less accurate.
Independent coaches do not need to pick a single future. They do need a view on whether their practice still makes sense if access, technology or professional regulation move.
The report is a prompt to notice dependencies: if your work relies on expensive one-to-one delivery, or on being the only ‘AI-free’ option, or on a loosely regulated market, those are business assumptions, not just philosophy.
Read it as a thinking tool. If a scenario would make your current offer hard to sell, that is useful information now, while you can still adapt.
This is an external source. Four Corners Coaching did not produce the original report.
The coaching industry · Registration required
ICF and PwC · September 2025
ICF’s sixth global study, conducted with PwC, estimates 122,974 coach practitioners worldwide and $5.34 billion in annual coaching revenue, with many coaches already earning from work beyond coaching itself.
Why we picked it. The market is growing, and so is the number of coaches — which makes the business around the craft harder to ignore.
AI & technology for coaches · Free to read
Henley Business School · 7 May 2025
Henley’s World of Work Institute surveyed 4,640 full-time UK workers and found 56% optimistic about AI and 61% overwhelmed by the pace of change.
Why we picked it. Workforce unease, not just technology, may be the coaching problem organisations actually have.
The coaching industry · Free to read
Passmore, Saraeva, Money, Diller and Mitchell, with EMCC Global · August 2025
A 2025 open-access study of 556 coaches across 52 countries, conducted with EMCC Global, finds coaches adding digital, team and group work while remaining cautious about AI, with fees varying by service, funder and country.
Why we picked it. It is one of the more grounded practitioner surveys on what coaches are adding, avoiding and charging.