Editorial: What to look out for in 2026

2026 marks our fourth year as Co-Editors-in-Chief for the journal. With the appreciated help of the Leadership community (past Editors, the Associate Editor team, Editorial Board, reviewers and readers) we seem to be making good ground in taking the journal forwards. For example, the Publisher Report from Sage for 2025 highlights a continued increase in submissions to the journal and an increase in circulations and downloads. Whilst some of our metrics, such as impact factor, remain the same, we are hoping that the circulation and download data will help increase these scores going forward. On the note of downloads and citations, we wanted to just take the opportunity to congratulate the authors of the following two articles which have been the top two most downloaded papers for both 2024 and 2025 – Eaton et al. (2024) and Kjellström et al. (2020). Also, to Donna Ladkin and Patrick (2022) for having our most cited article of 2025. We also wanted to take this opportunity to highlight what to expect in the journal in 2026. With a great selection of articles in the pipeline (including those published in this issue) we expect to see a busy year with a greater diversity of geographical origin for the research we publish. We also want to bring to your attention the upcoming publication of an editorial dedicated to Special Issue Development alongside two Special Issues (one on Systems Leadership and Change and the second on Leadership in Dialogue) to be published over the next 18 months or so. Lastly, as always, we will be expanding our Associate Editor team and Editorial Board so watch out for further news on these developments and if you have capacity to review papers over the coming months, please contact us, we are always in need of extra help in this regard!