Top Insights from DevLearn 2025: What L&D Leaders Should Know for 2026

DevLearn 2025 wasn’t just another conference—it felt like a reset. After years of pressure, shifting priorities, and constant demands to “do more with less,” the L&D community showed up hungry for clarity, connection, and a new way forward.

Across sessions, conversations, and hallway chats, one truth echoed: learning teams aren’t just supporting change anymore—they’re leading it. And AI is at the center of that shift.

Below are the biggest themes that emerged through the lens of what Smartcat leaders heard firsthand.

After years of being stretched thin, L&D teams are rising again. Ron Thomas, CRO at Smartcat shared that people are hungry for clarity and direction, and the themes are consistent everywhere: doing more with less, increasing throughput, embracing AI, delivering microlearning, and impacting the business faster.

AI wasn’t a side conversation. It was the conversation. Leaders want a partner, not another tool. Someone to show them what actually works and how to scale it.

For decades, L&D teams have dreamed of delivering learning paths tailored to each employee’s role, needs, and performance. This year, people weren’t just imagining it, they were actively looking for solutions to do it now.

Smartcat’s AI Agents came up again and again because they finally make this realistic: A system that adapts to business needs, learns from experts, and delivers personalized content across any language or format.

This is the moment the industry has been waiting for.

Smartcat’s VP of Marketing Nicole DiNicola articulated the frustration nearly every leader shared: L&D keeps getting boxed into “content creation.”

Real learning happens through feedback loops, coaching, and connection. But feedback doesn’t scale easily. It's time-consuming, manual, and expensive. Content is what scales, so teams keep getting pulled back toward production instead of impact.

As Nicole put it, teams don’t want “more, faster.” They want to work differently—so the work actually matters. People crave connection, not more course slides.

This is where Smartcat’s belief resonates deeply:

When teams feel understood and connected, they feel less alone and they perform at their best.

The conference theme wasn’t just a slogan. It felt personal. When employees feel supported, seen, and equipped, everything changes, from confidence and engagement to performance and retention. L&D teams have a unique ability to remove loneliness from the workplace by facilitating connection, communication, and shared understanding.

That responsibility has never felt more vital or more achievable with the right tools.

Curiosity about AI is at an all-time high, but so is uncertainty. Teams want to adopt AI confidently, not recklessly. Across conversations, leaders shared similar questions:

1. How do we use AI without losing quality or trust?

2. How do we avoid fragmentation and shadow processes?

3. How do we scale learning globally without burning out the team?

Smartcat’s approach resonated because it isn’t about generic AI. It’s about expert-enabled AI Agents that learn from your best people and automate the work that slows teams down—from content creation to translation to adapting materials for every market.

Teams don’t want another tool. They want a strategic partner who helps them move faster, stay consistent, and make an impact everywhere.

Genevieve Carbone, Smartcat’s Director of Product Marketing for L&D, shared a major takeaway: L&D is now at the center of every business transformation.

From onboarding during hyper-growth to upskilling teams for tomorrow’s skills, learning is what holds global organizations together. But expectations keep rising. Budgets aren’t. Traditional workflows can’t keep up.

That’s why Smartcat’s DevLearn announcement landed with real weight:

Smartcat introduced the first solution that translates every asset inside SCORM Rise 360 courses—text, images, video, documents— in a single flow, producing one multilingual SCORM file ready for any LMS.

No re-packaging. No manual reconstruction. No endless review loops.

When learning is understood everywhere, businesses grow everywhere.

This year, something subtle but important shifted: L&D isn’t just a support function, they’re carrying business-critical work. They’re being asked to:

1. Accelerate digital transformation

2. Train global teams faster

3. Personalize learning at scale

4. Keep content consistent across regions

5. Drive measurable business impact

And they’re expected to do all that with a flat headcount and rising expectations.

This is exactly the kind of complexity Smartcat was built for—helping teams automate the manual work, keep learning up to speed with the business, and deliver global content from day one.

The strongest theme of the week was also the simplest: Learning is what connects us.

Across countries, languages, and roles, learning is the common thread that helps teams grow together. DevLearn showed that people aren’t looking for more noise—they’re looking for alignment, purpose, and shared understanding.

And that’s what Smartcat aims to unlock with expert-enabled AI Agents that help L&D teams work smarter, move faster, and deliver learning that truly impacts people.

DevLearn 2025 made one thing clear: The industry is entering a new chapter.

Teams are energized again. AI is no longer a side experiment—it’s becoming the backbone of scalable learning. And connection—not just content—is the currency of impact.

Smartcat is proud to stand alongside the L&D community at this moment of change. Because when teams feel connected, supported, and understood, lives change, both inside and outside the workplace.