Learning is evolving—and so are weIn the past, learners found your courses through our marketplace or Udemy Business. Today, they’re asking ChatGPT for coding tutorials, turning to AI tutors for instant feedback, and expecting personalized learning recommendations at their fingertips.
The rise of AI didn’t just change how people learn—it fundamentally changed what they expect from learning. Today’s learners want interactive experiences, personalized guidance, hands-on practice, and direct outcomes that go beyond watching videos.
Their preferences are shifting in other ways too. While many still love the flexibility of one-time course purchases, more learners are seeking continuous access through subscriptions. The entire industry is moving toward ongoing learning, and so are we. In fact, we grew Udemy’s Personal Plan to 293k+ subscribers in 2025 alone.
That’s why we’re building tools meant to help you thrive in this new era, whether you teach in the marketplace, through subscriptions, or to enterprise learners. Together, we’re not just building new features—we’re creating the foundation for the next generation of online education, where instructors and learners grow side by side.
Tools for Tomorrow’s TeachingThis year has been a turning point for online learning. We’ve focused on providing more ways for you to connect with learners, expand your reach, and grow your impact.
New Content Formats to Bring Learning to Life
Role Play launched earlier this year as a new way for learners to practice real-world skills through interactive scenarios. Picture a project management role play where learners navigate team conflicts or make tough decisions in the moment. This AI-powered creation tool has enabled nearly 2.9k instructors to publish more than 16.1k Role Plays so far!
We also introduced In-course Labs, hands-on spaces where learners can apply technical skills directly within your course. Think coding labs where students debug real problems and learn by doing.
To make course creation faster and easier, we introduced the Production Hub—a new resource offering the latest templates, tools, and tips for your course videos.
Looking ahead, we’re exploring even more ways to help you create engaging, multimodal content that reflects your unique teaching style and expertise.
New Ways to Monetize Your Expertise
This fall, we began piloting Connect 1-1, which enables learners to book one-on-one coaching sessions with you directly after taking your course. It’s a natural way to deepen learner relationships and open up a new stream of personalized income.
In September, we launched Instructor-led Bundles, allowing you to group related courses together to help learners go deeper while increasing your earnings per sale. Today, more than 9,000 instructor-led bundles have been published since we launched in September 2025. Great news: we’ll soon be launching an automatic 15% off pricing feature on all Instructor-led Bundles for instructors participating in the Instructor Deal Program, making your bundles more compelling to learners and helping you unlock more revenue from the content you’ve already created.
Rewarding Your Contribution to Subscription Growth
We’re excited to announce a new incentive designed to reward instructor contributions to Udemy’s growing subscription business. The Subscription Bonus is intended to enable instructors to participate meaningfully in this growth by compensating instructors whenever their course landing page leads to a consumer subscription purchase. For 2026, we’ve allocated up to $2M USD to support this bonus.
The Subscription Bonus is subject to additional terms. Specific payment calculations and bonus limitations will be provided to instructors in the Subscription Bonus Policy.
What’s Coming in 2026Course Variations
Every great course starts with a strong foundation—but what happens when your learners’ needs start to diverge? Some may need a gentler entry point, others want advanced projects or role-specific examples, and still others just want to stay up to date with the latest version of your topic. Course Variations aims to make it possible to adapt your content strategically without starting from scratch. By building new variations from your existing course, you could reach new audiences, keep your catalog fresh, and strengthen your overall brand reputation. Keep your eyes peeled for more information in Q1 2026!
Instructor Subscription Phased Rollout
Many instructors have shared how they’re increasingly engaging learners beyond traditional courses; through live sessions, communities, and more frequent learning. We’ve been listening, and in 2026, we plan a phased rollout of a new experience around Instructor Subscriptions.
This isn’t about replacing instructors’ traditional Udemy courses—it’s a complementary format intended to help them engage directly with learners, experiment with new content types, build stronger communities, and create recurring revenue streams.
We’re particularly excited about the possibilities for short-form content, including content under our current 30-minute minimum. This phased rollout approach will help us understand what truly matters to learners and how Udemy can best scale instructors’ subscription communities over time. Instructors interested in participating can express interest using the information provided in this announcement.
AI-Powered Micro-learning
We’re going to be rolling out AI-powered tools designed to help transform instructors’ existing courses into interactive microlearning experiences; breaking skill acquisition down into bite sized moments that meet learners where they are, whether in the flow of work, on mobile, or during brief study sessions.
Instructors remain absolutely central to this vision. We see instructors as curators and directors of AI, bringing their expertise, teaching skills, and creativity to new formats that can reach millions of learners. This new functionality is designed to analyze courses, identify key learning objectives, and generate interactive activities tailored to those goals. In our perspective, only instructors can validate whether the AI created activities capture the essence of their teaching and ensure the quality meets their standards.
This innovation is designed to open powerful new learning opportunities while maintaining the human expertise that makes Udemy’s instruction so valuable.
Content Innovation Fund
To accelerate the future of learning and support instructors leading the charge in educational innovation, we’re establishing a Content Innovation Fund, with committed funding of $2.5M USD. This dedicated investment is designed to provide grants and resources for instructors who are pioneering new content formats, experimenting with subscription-based learning experiences, and leveraging AI-powered tools to create engaging microlearning opportunities. Whether instructors are developing interactive short-form content, building learning communities, or transforming traditional courses into bite-sized experiences that meet learners in the flow of work, this fund is designed to remove financial barriers and support experimentation. Leading by example, instructors, like learners, are always learning, too.
Application processes, eligibility criteria, and additional terms will be announced separately.
Reminder
As we continue investing in these new tools and opportunities, we want to remind you that we’re implementing a 2.5% revenue share adjustment in January 2026 to help fund these innovations and maintain the high-quality experience you and your learners expect. See our Teaching Center article for details.
Planning the Next MoveThe future of learning isn’t being built by technology alone—it’s being built by people like you. Your creativity, your expertise, and your connection with learners are what make Udemy thrive.
As we look to the year ahead, our goal is simple: to help you do more of what you do best—teach, inspire, and transform lives.
Teach on!
The Udemy Team
