Welcome to mabl’s seventh annual research report, The 2026 State of Quality Engineering. Each year, we survey a diverse range of software professionals to better understand how testing and quality engineering are evolving across numerous industries. This year, one finding rose above all others: AI has moved from pilot programs to production reality in software development, and the growing disparity between teams can’t be ignored
For teams with strong quality engineering foundations, AI is increasingly becoming a force multiplier. It makes them faster, more collaborative, and more effective. For teams without those foundations, AI is accelerating them toward the same bottlenecks and roadblocks they’ve always had, only at a much faster rate.
There’s a lot to be optimistic about when looking at this year’s data. AI is already delivering measurable gains in speed, collaboration, and customer satisfaction for software teams that have the right quality practices and infrastructures in place. For teams without those, the path is clear: the organizations seeing real ROI from AI aren’t out of reach. They're making deliberate investments in quality infrastructure that any team can start making today.
About this survey
A total of 996 software quality professionals, software developers, and technology decision-makers across the US and UK participated in our 2026 survey, coming from organizations of all sizes and a broad range of industries.