Over the past year, New & Next has become a primary way Instructure shares product updates with our institution customers —providing greater transparency into what’s launching, what’s coming, and how it supports shared success. Recognizing our Partners’ need for Instructure roadmap insights, we’ve encouraged Partners to engage with the content too. We’ve also introduced Partner-specific New & Next content, focusing on Canvas LMS releases that directly impact integrations, in addition to updates to our Evidence services and Elevate Standards Alignment.
In 2026, we’re evolving New & Next with a more intentional format designed to meet all of our stakeholders where they are. April and October will feature executive-led New & Next Showcase webinars focused on major initiatives, while January and July will deliver asynchronous, blog-based updates you can review on your own schedule. We plan to continue sharing Partner-specific updates alongside the other New & Next content in January and July. This post marks our first Partner focused asynchronous update and hones in on backend changes intended to support platform security and impact integrations.
For details and more resources on institution-facing release and roadmap items coming soon, check out the latest New & Next blog post for Instructure customers.
Let’s dive in.
Canvas Updates
Canvas updates that directly impact Integration Partners have focused on backend platform data security and API governance best practices.
Available now:
For a more holistic view of recent Canvas feature releases, explore our end-of-year product resources. These are designed to give institution users a clear, visual summary of top 2025 updates, so you can quickly see what’s new, what’s improved, and how it impacts your integrated solution(s).
Canvas Career
Canvas Career, a new learning experience built to meet the rising demand for workforce-aligned, skills-first education, released to General Availability (GA) on January 20, 2026. Designed specifically for adult learners, Canvas Career enables both private and public sector organizations to deliver flexible, scalable programs that help meet the rising demand for workforce-aligned, skills-first education.
Initial development and Early Adopter Program (EAP) efforts have focused on institution user experience. With Canvas Career now in GA, Instructure’s Product and Partner teams are actively working on a small Partner EAP during 1H 2026. This will be critical to understanding the Integration Partner experience in Canvas Career and planning for future development efforts to support integrations. We expect to open Canvas Career sandbox environments and API endpoints to all Integration Partners in 2H 2026.
Learn more about Canvas Career here.
Elevate Standards Alignment
We’re investing in workflow and UI updates to ensure that Elevate Standards Alignment drives maximum efficiency for content, curriculum and assessment teams, while maintaining our ongoing commitment to providing the most up-to-date standards data.
Available now:
Coming next:
- Smart Importer Enhancements: We will build upon the initial Smart Importer release by adding advanced filtering options that will allow users to achieve more accurate alignment matches, plus bulk acceptance to speed up review processes with one-click approval for high-confidence matches.
- CASE Standards Interoperability: We plan to fully support interoperability with CASE Network 2 standards data by Q2 2026. This integration will enable users to report on content to the Elevate AB GUIDs against CASE GUIDs.
Mastery Item Bank
Assessment solutions need to show what students know and where they might be struggling. To ensure the Mastery Item Bank is helping you achieve these objectives, we’ve focused on expanding our library of assessment items with two big goals: supporting our youngest learners, and adding more "hands-on" thinking to science. This work is part of a larger update that brings our total collection to over 137,000 high-quality, standards aligned items.
Available now:
- K-2 Expansion and New Science Clusters | Blog Post
IgniteAI
We realize Partners are eager to understand more about Instructure’s AI functionality and roadmap. We announced IgniteAI last year at InstructureCon and shared an update on institution Early Adopter Program (EAP) progress in November’s New & Next Showcase. At this time we aren’t able to support integrations within IgniteAI, but remain dedicated to an ecosystem approach to AI and will provide additional updates to Partners ahead of the 2026-27 school year.
The latest IgniteAI release updates for institution users can be found in the customer-facing New & Next blog.
Stay connected to New & Next
Looking ahead, our next institution-focused New & Next Showcase will take place in April—a live, executive-led event where we’ll dive deeper into our most impactful initiatives (registration details coming soon). This asynchronous update format, including Partner-specific updates, will return again in July following our Partner Summit and InstructureCon customer conference events in Louisville, Kentucky. In the meantime, we encourage you to explore the linked resources, connect with your Partner Success manager, fill out our Partner information request form, or comment on this post.
Thank you for your continued engagement, feedback, and energy—you play a critical role in helping us deliver thoughtful, effective digital teaching and learning experiences that better serve educators and learners everywhere.
