State of CIAM 2026: 14 Trends From 200 Vendor Changelogs
Security Boulevard, Friday, June 5th, 2026
Annual State of CIAM (Customer Identity and Access Management) report distills 14 trends from a year of 200+ CIAM vendor changelogs, led by passkeys and agent identity.
Analyst Deepak Gupta's annual State of CIAM 2026 report derives 14 trends from monitoring public changelogs and release notes of CIAM vendors over the May 2025 to May 2026 period, categorizing releases into roughly 40 capability buckets; a trend qualified if at least five vendors shipped meaningfully or buyer impact crossed a clear threshold.
Key trends include passkey-first signup flows becoming the default (with Stytch, Clerk, Descope and Beyond Identity shipping them and Auth0 adding a configurable default), and the rise of AI agents and workload identity as MCP servers and agentic workflows need identity that doesn't fit the human-user model, pushing workload identity and CIAM to converge. The report also notes B2B market bifurcation, with WorkOS and Frontegg favored for B2B needs while Auth0 remains the default for B2C and mixed-mode.