(TLP:CLEAR) Assessing Terrorism Trends on the Horizon in 2026

Summary: In 2025, terrorists and violent extremists were involved in numerous attacks and plots targeting the U.S. and its Western partners. These past attacks and other trends can help assess the terrorist threat environment in 2026. Therefore, as a new year begins, the Soufan Center has published an annual piece, which was previously published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), assessing potential terrorism trends to monitor in 2026.

Analyst Note: In assessing the past year of terrorist plots and attacks, the report highlights five overarching analytical judgments that have grave national security ramifications:

• Salafi-Jihadist terrorist organizations in conflict zones, primarily on the African continent, are highly lethal and successfully expanding their territorial presence and operational tempo.
• External operations remain within the capabilities of many Salafi-Jihadist terrorist groups, including through inspiring and directing individuals remotely, as recently occurred in Sydney, Australia.
• Non-ideological, ideologically diffuse, and niche single-issue-inspired violent acts are on the ascent globally, often resulting from online radicalization.
• Political violence and domestic extremism have become increasingly normalized and downplayed by some prominent individuals in government and the media.
• The reclassification of drug cartels and gangs as terrorist organizations has led to a radically altered counterterrorism strategy in the U.S. and beyond.

Notably, the report assesses state-sponsored terrorism remains a serious risk. “State-sponsored terrorism can also manifest in external operations: Iran is known to use operatives within the United States and the West more broadly, in addition to local low-level petty criminals and youth it recruits online to execute operations,” according to the report. In the U.S. homeland, the threat landscape is characterized by the increasing normalization of political violence, which could manifest in attacks on critical infrastructure, and the growing trend of non-ideological violent acts and composite violent extremism.

Moreover, around the world, “the rise of memetic and nihilist violent extremism will continue to lead to offline violence in 2026, with various online subcultures increasingly responsible for lethal attacks, often perpetrated by minors,” the report states. Emerging technology, such as drones and artificial intelligence, will likely continue to be utilized by violent extremists to enhance their operational capabilities. Attack plots featuring drones have already been thwarted over the past year and a half. But in 2026, “easy access to weaponization guides online and to cheap commercial drones may enable a successful attack in 2026, which would be highly mediatized and carry significant propaganda value,” according to the report.  

Original Source: https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2026-january-8/

Additional Reading:

• Security Preparedness – Analyzing Terrorism Trends on the Horizon in 2025
• Extremist Content Online: ISIS Celebrates 2025 Attacks, Calls for Lone-Actor Attacks in 2026; CEP Researchers Locate Notorious ISIS Bomb Making Video on Five Websites; Neo-Nazi Groups Note Successes in 2025 and Call for Strengthening Movements in 2026

Mitigation Recommendations:

• Protective Security Advisor Program
• CISA – Active Shooter Preparedness
• CISA – Personal Security Considerations Action Guide

Related WaterISAC PIRs: 1, 2, 3, & 4