The priority for UK plc is resilience

UK CEOs are feeling the strain more than ever before, according to the KPMG 2026 CEO Outlook. This year, 82% say they feel under more pressure to ensure the long-term prosperity of their business. That’s up from 79% in 2025.

The reason? They continue to be faced with a myriad of complex challenges, reflected in the top 5 threats identified by respondents to this year’s CEO Outlook: global economic uncertainty, cybersecurity, regulator pressures, supply chain resilience, geopolitical instability.

These challenges can’t be dealt with in isolation – they’re all interrelated. 82% of UK CEOs say geopolitical conflicts and tensions will impact their organisation’s prosperity over the next three years. And it does so by impacting supply chains, cybersecurity and the global economy. It’s no surprise then that geopolitical monitoring and analysis are an investment priority for mitigating risk.

The ongoing challenges facing CEOs have contributed to UK CEOs feeling less optimistic about UK economic growth, with confidence dropping from 79% in 2025 to 64% this year. Confidence in the global economy has also been falling, from 70% in 2024 to 65% in 2025, and again to 63% this year.

But UK CEOs are bullish about the prospects for their own companies. Their confidence here has grown significantly – from 74% in 2025 to 86% now. Over three-quarters (77%) say their revenues increased over the past fiscal year, and 69% expect earnings to rise by 2.5% or more over the next three years – that’s up from 64% in 2025. And 83% are planning to make some acquisitions.

Faced with complex and interrelated challenges, CEOs are focusing on embedding resilience within their organisations. And they’re not expecting those challenges to disappear overnight. The vast majority (96%) say their resilience planning agenda has moved from short-term to long-term over the past year.

UK CEOs are demonstrating varying risk appetites, pointing towards differing approaches to navigating today’s challenges. While 61% are maintaining their existing level of risk taking, almost one in five (17%) say they’re becoming more cautious and 9% are prioritising risk mitigation over new opportunities. Meanwhile, 13% are taking more risks to capitalise on opportunities.

Given ongoing economic and geopolitical uncertainty, CEOs have made cybersecurity and digital risk resilience their number one investment priority to mitigate business risks over the next three years. That’s unsurprising given that 82% believe cybercrime and cyber insecurity will impact their organisation’s prosperity over the next three years.

This sense of cyber insecurity has been flamed by geopolitical uncertainty and talk of virtual threats. It’s also been impacted by rapid developments in AI. That’s brought with it risks from AI-enabled cyber criminals, who can expose vulnerabilities at speed.

But UK CEOs also see AI as key to managing risks. AI integration into operations and workflow is third on UK CEOs’ list of areas for investment to mitigate risks. Faced with threats from the misuse of frontier AI, organisations’ can use AI to shorten patch cycles and respond at machine speed.

It’s not just in the world of cyber resilience that AI is being adopted to mitigate risks. When asked which supply chain strategy they’re prioritising to improve resilience over the next 12 months, 41% said ‘improving end-to-end visibility through data, AI or digital tools’, making it the top answer by some way. And AI has the potential to support organisations sustainability efforts too – for example, by enhancing climate risk modelling and scenario planning (87%) and identifying opportunities for resource efficiency (75%).

CEOs are responding to the regulatory pressures they’re under by increasing investment in regulatory and compliance reporting – ranked at no.2 in the areas where CEOs have increased investment to mitigate business risks over the next three years.

The CEO Outlook results find that regulatory uncertainty over AI is being felt keenly by UK CEOs – 61% expect the pace of progress on AI regulation to pose a barrier to their organisation’s success. This isn’t just a question of CEOs wanting clarity on regulations faster. It’s also about global consistency – 39% of UK CEOs say varying regional regulation is a barrier to implementing AI. In response, almost half (49%) of UK CEOs are increasing their focus on internal data governance controls as part of their AI and data sovereignty strategies.

This fragmented regulatory landscape is also impacting organisations’ sustainability efforts. When asked what the greatest barrier was to achieving net zero, UK CEOs placed ‘increasing – but inconsistent – regulation requirements across jurisdictions’ at the top of the list.

While CEOs are focused on resilience, they’re still investing to drive growth. As it was in 2025, their top operational priority to achieve their growth objectives over the next three years is advancing digitisation and connectivity across the business. CEOs recognise that they can’t simply plug and play to gain the full benefits or AI and other tech. They need robust foundations in place – agile platforms, data they can trust and secure connectivity.

The future isn’t just about tech. CEOs know the importance of having top talent in place. But the talent and skills needed are changing as organisations move into an era of human-AI collaboration. Consequently, there’s a big focus on AI education and upskilling the workforce.

UK CEOs are facing geopolitical instability and global economic uncertainty, the impact of AI on how they operate, and a fragmented regulatory landscape. They’re feeling the pressure. So, what skills do they need to lead their organisations through uncertainty and change?

The top 5 capabilities UK CEOs identify as most essential in today’s unpredictable environment mirror the challenges they face. Top of the list is greater agility and faster decision-making under pressure. Almost half (47%) of UK CEOs say it’s a skill that’s becoming essential, compared to just 18% a year ago. Also on the list are digital literacy and geopolitical and regulatory understanding.

Just outside the top 5 is ‘enhanced emotional intelligence, resilience and effective communication’ (30%). As they focus on building the long-term resilience of their businesses, UK CEOs recognise that they need to foster their own emotional resilience and ensure they’re communicating their strategies effectively with their people.