YouTube announces new features for 2026

Oct 5, 2026

YouTube announced a long list of updates at its annual Made on YouTube event in September. Here are the ones most relevant to brands and creators.

Custom feeds

Viewers can now describe what they’re in the mood to watch, and YouTube will build a feed around it that they can save for later. Think cosy content, recipe ideas or funny clips featuring a certain comedian. It’s rolling out to all US users this autumn, with no UK date yet.

This is a real shift in how people use social media. It’s a good reason to lean into your keyword and description strategy on YouTube, describing your videos the way your audience might search for them.

Ask YouTube for shopping

Viewers can ask YouTube’s AI assistant questions about products without leaving the video they’re watching. With TikTok Shop on the rise, this is YouTube’s play for social commerce, and it could be huge for fashion, beauty and ecommerce.

More from Shorts

  • Image carousels: these are expanding in the Shorts feed, and image posts will now show on channel pages when people watch on TV
  • Series: creators can group Shorts into seasons and episodes, which suits episodic storytelling like the mini drama series taking off in short-form video. Expect to see a lot more of this next year

If you haven’t tried Shorts yet, test it with content you’ve already made for TikTok or Instagram. We’ve been testing this over the last year, and some of our videos work really well on Shorts too.

AI tools for creators

  • Editing assistant: powered by Google’s Gemini, it creates a first draft, trims pauses, reorders clips and adds text
  • Thumbnail testing: upload three thumbnails per video, and YouTube shows each viewer the version most likely to appeal to them
  • A/B testing edits: test different edits of the same video
  • Ask Studio: an AI assistant in YouTube Studio that explains your performance and can even draft sponsorship proposals and responses to brand briefs

YouTube is clearly making a big play to keep creators on the platform. If you’d like to learn more, our YouTube for Business workshop runs in December. You can learn more here.

 

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