The 6 Hottest Topics For SAP Developers in 2026

As SAP customers move into 2026, the conversation is shifting from experimentation to execution. Specifically, the chatter is turning to how AI, data platforms, and developer tooling will translate into measurable operational gains. The most pressing questions SAP professionals are asking now are not about vision, but about scale: which capabilities will mature fastest, where governance and productivity challenges will surface, and how teams should prioritize investments over the next 12–18 months.

Many of the signals that help answer those questions emerged at SAP TechEd in November 2025. While the event itself is now in the rearview mirror, the themes that dominated practitioner debriefs offer a useful blueprint for what SAP teams should expect to grapple with in 2026, and why those priorities are already taking shape.

1) SAP Joule + agentic AI

The loudest buzz was around agentic AI, especially Joule Agents, because it signals a shift from AI that helps to AI that can do multi-step work across business processes. The practical focus is what made this the hottest topic of discussion: SAP pros are pointing to build orextend patterns via Joule Studio and the push toward connecting agents across ecosystems including stated intent to provide MCP support and A2A direction. SAP’s own framing of these announcements focuses on agentic AI’s potential to lead to faster, more autonomous business execution with less manual work.

2) SAP Business Data Cloud

Right behind agents is the data story, because most SAP teams have learned the hard way that AI value lives and dies on trusted business context. A lot of the chatter focused on SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) as the platform for governed business data, plus the degree to which SAP is leaning into openness, including joint positioning with Snowflake and BDC Connect, often discussed in the context of reducing friction for cross-platform analytics and AI. For an SAP-based perspective, see SAP’s own “Top takeaways” recap.

3) The App, Data, and AI Trinity

Even when people disagreed on which single announcement at SAP TechEd mattered most, the same umbrella concept kept coming up: SAP’s App‑Data‑AI flywheel. This serves as a shorthand roadmap for many developers in 2026: apps create process context, the data layer preserves meaning and governance, and AI turns that into actions embedded in the flow of work. It matters because this is the lens SAP uses to connect product strategy across applications, platform, and AI rather than treating them as separate tracks.

4) SAP RPT‑1 and AI

Among more technical audiences, SAP RPT‑1 has generated a lot of interest because it’s positioned as a specialized AI model optimized for structured enterprise data. The reason it resonates is straightforward: core SAP outcomes are still driven by tables, and many teams are hungry for modeling approaches that scale across use cases without stitching together dozens of one-off predictors. At TechEd, SAP presented this direction. In 2026, this shift towards AI-driven automation that materially speeds execution and reduces operational friction across core business processes will gain momentum.

5) Developer Experience Modernization

The “how do we build this?” thread was a steady undercurrent for developers in 2025 and consisted of modern extension, modern tooling, and faster delivery loops. SAP has highlighted its ABAP Cloud direction and also communicated a planned ABAP Cloud extension for VS Code with general availability planned for Q2 2026, which practitioners repeatedly call out as an important signal about where ABAP development workflows are heading. This TechEd conversation,  on Cloud Application Programming Model (CAP) highlights a developer centric slice of this conversation that will be integral to modernization in 2026.

6) Clean Core Extensibility Becomes More Real-World

Clean core extensibility is the sixth hot topic that will be discussed by SAP pros in 2026. This means clean core is becoming a hands-on engineering practice that’s starting to get more tooling and clearer guidance. Particularly, TechEd sessions highlighted enhanced clean core extensibility for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition and have framed it around practical governance and modernization using tools like ABAP Test Cockpit. SAP’s broader clean core message also stresses that this adoption leads to lower technical debt, easier upgrades, and faster innovation cycles, while reinforcing an SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP)-first mindset for extensions where appropriate.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

Viewed through a 2026 lens, the announcements made during SAP TechEd 2025 read more like an early map of where SAP customers will be spending real delivery effort next. The emphasis on agentic AI, governed business data, and developer productivity reflects SAP’s intent to push AI beyond assistive features and into repeatable, auditable execution inside core processes.

For SAP teams, the takeaway is not to chase every new capability, but to prepare for a year focused on operational discipline: defining where agents are allowed to act, standardizing data semantics across platforms, and choosing development models that reduce complexity. The organizations that move fastest in 2026 are likely to be those that treat TechEd 2025 not as a highlight reel, but as an advance warning of where practical work is about to intensify. ​