LinkedIn Updates 2026: New Features and What No Longer Works
LinkedIn updates 2026 in one place, each with its status: since September 2025 the feed favours consistent topic experts and dwell time over recency, and engagement pods and posting for frequency are on the list of what no longer works.
LinkedIn updates in short
- Every entry in the register carries a status: announced, in testing, live or withdrawn, because LinkedIn announces more than it ships and ships more than it keeps.
- Change your process only once a feature is live: nobody sees announced features yet, and features in testing run on some accounts with no promise they stay.
- LinkedIn shipped the in-network / out-of-network metric later than announced and backfilled the data by a year, which changed the conclusions of everyone who had already built on those numbers.
- In October 2025 LinkedIn added the Saves and Sends metrics to posts, which show deeper engagement than likes. In Executive Search they finally allow conversion tracking, because job seekers rarely liked recruiter posts.
- In September 2026 Sales Navigator decision-maker alerts reach Microsoft Teams only on Advanced Plus and currently skip people in the EEA, Switzerland and the UK, so a team selling in Europe gets nothing there about European decision makers.
- An entry gets into the register only once I have seen it myself or verified it on a client account, which is why the list is shorter than round-ups running to hundreds of items.
Updates I covered in depth
The features below have their own write-ups, together with the status each one holds today. LinkedIn regularly announces things it never ships, ships them as tests, or withdraws them months later — so the announcement date on its own tells you very little.
| When | What changed | Status |
|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn announced Hiring Assistant 2 (reasoning model, fit signals, screening, Teams integration), rolling out to current users in November 2026. Plus colleague verification and verification in the apply flow. Read more | Announced | |
| September Sales Navigator release: alerts in Microsoft Teams, Lead IQ in CRM, signals in LinkedIn notifications, smarter search and warm introductions. Read more | Live | |
| Sales Navigator alerts about decision-maker changes now reach Microsoft Teams. Advanced Plus only, with no alerts about people in the EEA, Switzerland or the UK. Read more | Live | |
| Sales Navigator's Lead IQ lead summary now works inside the CRM. Advanced Plus with CRM Sync only, and only when LinkedIn is set to English. Read more | Live | |
| Key Sales Navigator alerts now arrive as regular LinkedIn notifications, on every license including Core. Read more | Live | |
| New Sales Navigator users answer four questions about their goal, product, ideal customer and target accounts. Rolling out gradually, plan availability unclear. Read more | In testing | |
| Sales Navigator alerts now prioritize leads tied to open CRM opportunities, consolidate updates from a single lead, and the weekly email draws on 22 alert types instead of 13. Read more | Live | |
| Sales Navigator search understands a buyer description, reads job levels more accurately and relaxes a filter when a search would return nothing. All licenses. Read more | Live | |
| Sales Navigator shows in search results who can introduce you to a lead and to the leaders of their company, sorted by relationship strength. Read more | Live | |
| A Sales Navigator Advanced Plus admin turns logging of notes and calls to the CRM on or off for all users from a single settings page. Read more | Live | |
| LinkedIn ended access to the Social Selling Index page for accounts without a Sales Navigator licence. Read more | Live | |
| Sales Navigator price list checked on September 8, 2026: Core $119.99 a month or $1,079.88 a year, Advanced $159.99 a month or $1,799.88 a year, Advanced Plus quoted individually. Read more | Live | |
| Account search sharing in Sales Navigator, available in Advanced and Advanced Plus licences. Read more | Live | |
| The in-network / out-of-network metric reached analytics, and LinkedIn backfilled a year of data. Read more | Live | |
| View counts are shown under comments. The counters are not unique. Read more | Live | |
| The changes announced for 2025 are live: a push for educational content, Lead IQ and an AI assistant for InMail messages in Sales Navigator. Read more | Live | |
| Saves and Sends landed in post analytics — the first measurement of dark social. Read more | Live | |
| The feed stopped being purely chronological — a good post can return to circulation days later. Read more | Live | |
| LinkedIn released a library of ready-made profile background banners, free of charge. Read more | Live | |
| LinkedIn refined video handling, changed how links in posts are treated and expanded analytics. Read more | Live | |
| Two-factor authentication became mandatory in the paid tools with access to member data: Sales Navigator, Recruiter and Campaign Manager. Read more | Live |
How to read this register
LinkedIn announces more than it ships, and ships more than it keeps. The announcement date on its own tells you very little — what matters is the state a feature is in today. So every entry carries a status:
- Announced — LinkedIn has said it is coming, but nobody sees it yet. Not the moment to rebuild a process around it.
- In testing — live for some accounts, often unannounced and with no promise it stays. Worth checking whether you have it, and nothing more.
- Live — rolled out broadly, safe to build on.
- Withdrawn — LinkedIn reversed course or quietly changed its mind. This is the most instructive category, because it shows what was not worth the effort.
That last category is why this register exists at all. With the in-network / out-of-network metric, LinkedIn did not just ship later than announced — it backfilled the data by a year, which changed the conclusions of everyone who had already built on those numbers.
What no longer works on LinkedIn
A separate list, because “what stopped working” gets asked more often than “what’s new”. The following still circulate in guides and no longer hold:
- Engagement pods. LinkedIn never banned them — it did something more effective, showing content from such groups only inside the group. Members inflate each other’s counters while real reach falls. I unpack the mechanism in the piece on how the algorithm actually works.
- Coordinated engagement bursts. A hundred reactions in the same minute from a link dropped into a group chat is a trivially detectable pattern.
- Hashtags as a reach channel. Since LinkedIn retired hashtag following they are a topical label, not a lever. Two or three relevant ones are enough.
- Posting for frequency. The algorithm rewards topical consistency and real dwell time, not how many times a week you publish.
- Treating the feed as chronological. LinkedIn prioritises relevance over recency — a good post can return to circulation days later.
Where this information comes from
Three sources, in this order: my own accounts and client accounts, where I can see what actually appeared; LinkedIn’s official announcements; and people who track the platform as closely — in particular Kevin D. Turner, who catches interface changes faster than anyone.
The rule I hold to: an entry gets into this register only once I have seen it myself or verified it on a client account. That is why this list is shorter than round-ups running to hundreds of items — and why you can rely on it.
Full update register
| Date | Title | Description | Implications |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 2026 | Sales Navigator in Teams, the CRM and LinkedIn notifications | Sales Navigator decision-maker alerts reach Microsoft Teams (Advanced Plus only), Lead IQ shows up in the view embedded in the CRM (Advanced Plus only, English LinkedIn only), and some signals, such as a saved lead’s promotion or new saved search results, arrive as regular LinkedIn notifications on all plans. Plus search that understands a buyer description and warm introductions right in the results. | Teams alerts currently skip people in the EEA, Switzerland and the UK, so a team selling in Europe gets nothing there about European decision makers. Most people will feel the LinkedIn notifications and the search changes, because they are in Core. Details and the plan table in the post on Sales Navigator 2026 features. |
| Nov 2025 | AI Training-Data Policy Update | LinkedIn announced that user data (profiles, posts, resumes) will be used to train AI models starting Nov 3 2025 in select regions (UK, EU, EEA, Canada, Switzerland) with opt-out options. | Members and companies should review privacy settings; brands should prepare for stricter EU compliance and potential client queries about data use. |
| Oct 2025 | Company Page Analytics Changes | Free company pages now limited to 1 competitor tracking slot; advanced analytics moved to Premium tiers where up to 9 competitors can be tracked. | Companies lose visibility into competitors; agencies should budget for Premium analytics or use external monitoring tools. |
| Oct 2025 | Post Metrics: “Saves” and “Sends” | New engagement metrics show how often a post is saved (bookmarked) or shared in messages. | Enables tracking of “deeper” engagement beyond likes/comments. For some industries like Executive Search, this finally enables conversion tracking since job seekers rarely liked recruiter posts. Content marketers analyzing ROI get new KPIs and should focus on these metrics. |
| Sep 2025 | Algorithm Update – Expertise & Dwell Time | Feed now prioritises content from consistent topic experts and longer dwell time rather than recency. | Post fewer but higher-quality updates; double down on niche authority and native formats (text, carousel, video). |
| Aug 2025 | BrandLink Video Ad Program | Expansion of video ad network with creator-led shows (LinkedIn paying creators for the first time, similar to YT and Meta) and new pre-roll ad format among selected publishers initially. | Marketers should allocate budget to video formats and creator collabs; video reach ↑ 36% YoY. |
| Jul 2025 | Campaign Manager AI Draft & Auto-Targeting | Added AI features that auto-generate ad copy and target audiences based on objectives and landing page. | Small companies gain access to faster ad setup; marketers should validate AI outputs for tone and brand alignment. I use this feature to check if AI understands my ad copy and landing page as intended. If AI suggestions don’t align with my assumptions, I start changing the copy. |
| May 2025 | AI Recruiter Global Roll-Out | AI agent for recruiters suggests candidates and auto-drafts messages in English (beta expanding to other languages). | Reduces recruiter workload; companies should train teams to review AI communication for bias/tone. Can be used for Polish language work by connecting with translation systems - I use DeepL. |
| Apr 2025 | Verified Badge on External Platforms | Verified LinkedIn users can display a “Verified on LinkedIn” badge on other platforms (e.g., Adobe Behance). | Boosts credibility and cross-platform trust; creators and brands should complete ID verification. |
| Mar 2025 | Company Intelligence API Beta | API gives marketers access to company engagement and employee data updates for CRM integration. | Enables ABM automation and cross-channel reporting; developers can embed LinkedIn signals into sales dashboards. I’m heavily testing this but limitations include high licensing costs, so it will likely only be adopted in large corporations. |
| Feb 2025 | Mini Sudoku & Casual Games | Added engaging logic games to increase session duration and diversify LinkedIn experience. | Part of LinkedIn’s “stickiness” strategy; brands could see more non-professional traffic time on feed as LinkedIn will report longer session times. I understand the decision - let the first person throw stones who didn’t farm crops in FarmVille on Facebook in 2010 - but I consider this a poor decision. |
| Jan 2025 | AI-Powered Job Search | Users can find jobs with natural-language queries (“marketing lead remote Europe”) vs filters. | Works only in English but generally works better than filters, so you can see job offers you wouldn’t know about due to poor filter selection. Employers should optimize job posts for semantic search phrases and test them! |
| Dec 2024 | AI Summaries for Posts and Articles | Experimental AI feature summarises long articles and comment threads for readers. | Improved content discoverability and Skill Graph matching. Long-form creators (articles and newsletters on LinkedIn) should create clear structure for AI summaries. This taught me to write blog texts so they’re visible later in ChatGPT. I don’t see these suggestions in October 2025 so I’m not sure if this feature still works. |
| Oct 2024 | Collaborative Articles - I won’t translate this name | “Collaborative Articles” (feature pairing LinkedIn editors + expert contributors) expanded globally and we could use it in Poland. | Great feature where LinkedIn AI created titles and table of contents for articles and then invited users to fill with content or comments. You got expert badges in specific industries for this. Unfortunately, after a few months, the badge awarding feature was removed due to hacking by Asian users. The record holder I saw had 330 industry expert badges and “Open to work” status. |
| Jun 2024 | Newsletter Importance Boost & Subscription Analytics | Improved newsletter tools: auto-subscribe on follow + insights into open & read rates. | Essential for content marketers; promotes loyal audiences vs one-off posts. |
| Apr 2024 | B2B Product Search Listings | Pilot of LinkedIn Product Pages showcasing B2B software/services in search results and LinkedIn Sales Navigator ecosystem. | Opens new SEO-like opportunities for SaaS vendors (currently only software can be added). After adding a product to LinkedIn database, you can search for it in Sales Navigator, e.g., find people looking for our or our industry software. In 2025, ads were also added to this. |
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