What’s new in HubSpot – January 2026
6 February 2026
January’s HubSpot updates aren’t flashy on the surface, but they mark an important shift in how the platform expects teams to work.
This month is less about launching new features and more about reducing friction. Between planning and execution. Between insight and action. Between AI and human judgement.
Rather than listing everything that shipped, this update focuses on what has genuinely changed, why it matters in practice, and where we’d recommend paying attention.
Marketing Studio (Beta): the update I keep coming back to
What’s changed
Marketing Studio is still in beta, but it’s the update I’ve found myself spending the most time in over the past few weeks.
I’ve been using it to plan and run our own campaigns, and what stands out immediately is how different it feels from the rest of the platform in a good way. Instead of jumping between campaign tools, planning documents and spreadsheets, you work in one large visual canvas that brings everything together.
Emails, landing pages, ads, social content, workflows and supporting assets all sit in the same space, laid out in a way that mirrors how marketers actually think about campaigns. It feels less like “building things in HubSpot” and more like working through a campaign.
Why this matters
Most marketing teams don’t fail because the ideas aren’t there. What usually causes friction is the effort it takes to hold everything together.
Campaigns are planned in one place, assets are built somewhere else, and performance data arrives later, once momentum has already carried you too far to easily change course. I see this pattern constantly, especially with small teams and single-marketer roles.
What Marketing Studio changes is the sense of visibility and control. When you can see the whole campaign in front of you, it becomes much easier to spot what’s missing, what’s over-engineered, or where the story isn’t quite joining up. The AI insights updating as you work add another layer, not as a loud instruction, but as a quiet nudge while decisions are still being made.
For time-stretched teams, this isn’t just a nicer interface. It genuinely reduces the mental load of running campaigns across too many disconnected tools.
How I’ve been using it
In practice, I’ve found it most useful as a planning and coordination space, rather than something you drop into once everything is already built.
A few things that have stood out:
- Starting with the canvas forces you to think about the campaign as a whole before rushing into asset creation
- Keeping messaging and content themes visible helps maintain consistency across channels
- Uploading brand elements early makes content creation feel more supported and less repetitive
- The AI insights are most helpful when treated as a sense-check, not a shortcut
It’s particularly effective for content-led campaigns and integrated activity, where alignment matters more than speed alone.
Our recommendation
If you get access to the Marketing Studio beta, don’t treat it as something to “have a look at when you’ve got time”.
Pick one real campaign and commit to using the canvas from the outset. Plan in it, build from it, and let the insights challenge your thinking while there’s still room to adapt.
This isn’t about doing more marketing or working faster for the sake of it. It’s about making campaign planning feel calmer, clearer and more joined up. For many teams, especially smaller ones, this will quietly but fundamentally change how campaign management feels day to day.
AI is moving closer to operations, not just content
What’s changed
January continues HubSpot’s shift towards more agentic AI. Breeze agents can now be triggered within workflows and take action on records, rather than simply suggesting content or insights.
This moves AI from a supportive role into operational territory.
Why this matters
When AI can update records, route activity or influence customer journeys, the conversation changes. The question is no longer whether AI is useful, but where it is appropriate.
Without clear boundaries, this kind of capability can undermine trust in data and processes. With the right guardrails, it can remove a lot of low-value manual work.
How to use it in practice
The safest and most effective starting points tend to be:
- Enrichment and classification
- Routing and prioritisation
- Flagging or tagging records for human review
Revenue-critical changes, lifecycle stages and compliance-sensitive actions should still involve explicit human oversight.
Our recommendation
Before expanding AI use, document what AI is allowed to do, where approvals are required, and how actions are logged. Governance matters more now than it did when AI was limited to drafting copy.
Segmentation is becoming easier and more honest
What’s changed
You can now convert saved CRM views directly into segments, carrying the same logic across without rebuilding filters. Alongside this, HubSpot provides clearer insight into how individual filters affect audience size.
Lead segmentation has also improved, allowing teams using the Lead object properly to separate “in the database” from “actively being worked”.
Why this matters
Most teams already rely on saved views. Until now, turning those views into something actionable has involved duplication and guesswork.
These updates reduce friction and make it easier to align teams around shared definitions of audiences and leads. That alignment is critical for trust between marketing and sales.
How to use it in practice
This is a good opportunity to:
- Turn your most trusted views into reusable segments
- Sense-check complex logic before campaigns go live
- Review naming conventions so audiences are understood consistently
For lead-based teams, clearer separation between contacts and active leads also improves reporting and pipeline conversations.
Our recommendation
Use this moment to simplify, not to create more segments. Fewer, better-defined audiences tend to outperform sprawling lists that nobody fully trusts.
Data governance is becoming more accessible
What’s changed
Breeze can now assist with creating CRM properties that include validation rules from the outset. You describe what you need in plain language, and the system applies constraints such as ranges, formats or date rules.
There are also improvements to permissions around merges, imports and content embeds.
Why this matters
Most CRM issues aren’t caused by bad intent. They come from well-meaning people creating fields without guardrails.
Lowering the barrier to “doing it properly” helps protect data quality without slowing teams down.
How to use it in practice
- Use AI-assisted property creation to prevent bad data entering the system
- Separate edit and merge permissions for critical objects
- Make import history easier to audit so issues can be traced quickly
Our recommendation
AI won’t replace good data culture, but it can make good behaviour easier. Pair these updates with simple documentation and clear ownership to keep your CRM usable over time.
Multi-account HubSpot is no longer a niche use case
What’s changed
January builds on HubSpot’s investment in multi-portal organisations, with better support for cross-account workflows, asset copying and shared automation.
Why this matters
More organisations are operating across multiple brands, regions or business units. Manual syncing doesn’t scale and introduces risk.
These updates make it more realistic to run a connected ecosystem without constant workarounds.
How to use it in practice
- Centralise logic where consistency matters
- Push automation out to local portals deliberately
- Keep documentation and ownership clear
Our recommendation
These features amplify both good and bad design. If you operate multiple portals, now is the right time to define what lives centrally, what stays local, and who owns change.
What we’d actually do this month
Rather than trying to adopt everything at once:
- Choose one campaign to plan and run in Marketing Studio
- Pick one audience to clean up and standardise properly
- Make one governance improvement that protects data or customer experience
Small, focused changes compound far more effectively than broad, rushed adoption.
Join our HubSpot community and February User Group
If you have found this useful and you want a space to ask questions, compare notes and learn from other HubSpot users, we are building exactly that.
In 2026 we are launching the Wagada HubSpot Community Group and a quarterly User Group, with our first session on the 26th February at Everyman in Broadgate.
You can expect:
- Practical templates and checklists you can take back into your own portal
- Real use cases and live demos, not just slides
- Honest conversations about what is working and what is not
If you would like help applying any of these changes to your portal right now, you can always get in touch with us at Wagada. This is the work I love: making HubSpot feel less overwhelming and more like the growth engine it is meant to be.
