Back from Corenet Global Summit EMEA 2026

Beyond the Horizon: when Corporate Real Estate seeks clarity in complexity

September 8–10, 2026 — Munich

The CoreNet Global EMEA Summit brought the corporate real estate community together in Munich, from September 8 to 10, for three days of conferences, research, and field experience. A year on from Amsterdam, the backdrop has changed but the underlying tension remains the same: steering real estate in an environment that has become unstable for the long term.

This year’s theme, “Beyond the Horizon: From Complexity to Clarity,” says a great deal. Complexity is no longer an episode to be weathered; it is the permanent regime. Economic uncertainty, shifting employee expectations, the arrival of AI, environmental pressure: the summit’s stated aim was not merely to “navigate” disruption, but to give real estate teams the means to move from reaction to a truly strategic role.

An opening thread: deciding under uncertainty

The general sessions brought together three unexpected profiles around a single question — how do you decide, and how do you get an entire organization to act, when certainty is missing? Jim Lawless, a freediving record-holder turned adviser to executive committees, made the case for “decision velocity” and organizational courage. Martin Lindstrom, named one of the world’s most influential people by TIME magazine, argued for stripping bureaucracy out of the organization and returning to common sense. Dr. Nashater Deu Solheim, a forensic psychologist, showed how trust and influence are built under pressure. Three angles, one message: in uncertainty, clarity is first and foremost a discipline of decision-making. A useful preamble before turning to the substance of the workplace.

Workplace: from “return to office” to value created

This is the clearest shift since Amsterdam. The question is no longer how to get people back, but how to ensure that every trip into the workplace produces value — for the employee, the organization, and the real estate portfolio. The session From Presence to Performance framed the debate in exactly these terms: we are moving from a logic of presence to a logic of performance.

This refocus on value calls for another, more delicate one: measurement. As organizations keep investing in the workplace to support collaboration, culture, and performance, the session Measuring the Value of the Evolving Workplace highlighted the question that remains open: how do you measure the real impact of these spaces? Without shared indicators, workplace investment is hard to defend. This is precisely the aim of the Onbord of our methodology: making sure the spaces we deliver produce the effects expected of them.

Well-being and compliance: two sides of the same data

A “human-centered” workplace is no longer just an argument for attractiveness: it is becoming a compliance matter. The session People First, Tech Forward spotlighted a regulatory wave that has now gone global — the European Union’s recast Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), Australia’s NABERS disclosure rules, Japan’s revised Energy Conservation Act, and building-performance standards now active in more than 40 U.S. cities.

The most striking lesson: these two demands can feed on the same data. Through the example of its neuro-inclusive, WELL-certified London office, Cisco showed how the very same sensor-and-data platform that creates truly human-centered spaces also generates the audit-ready evidence regulators are starting to require. In the same spirit, the session Healthy Buildings & Human Sustainability made the case that “healthy building” strategies improve both human and business outcomes, feed non-financial (human-capital) reporting, and scale across a global portfolio.

In other words: comfort and health at work stop being a cost and become a measurable, reportable asset.

Neurodiversity, a design driver

A direct extension of this human-centered workplace: neurodiversity. The session Neurodiversity as an Enabler proposed a reversal of perspective — no longer approaching it solely through the lens of inclusion or “accommodating” adjustments, but as a driver of better thinking, innovation, collaboration, and workplace design. Designing for cognitive diversity means designing better for everyone. A theme that echoes our own work on the impact of workspaces on the brain.

AI reshapes workplace needs

Artificial intelligence ran through the entire program, the workplace included. The session The Identic Office started from a simple observation: the pace of AI’s advance is staggering, and within a few months it has worked its way into a considerable share of knowledge workers’ daily tasks — reshaping their needs, and therefore the spaces meant to accommodate them. The session The New Role of Flexibility, for its part, drew on a major 2026 workplace survey to explore how the mass adoption of AI is transforming the way we use space, between new constraints and new opportunities.

The common thread ties back to the summit’s theme: moving from raw data to informed decisions. It is our conviction too — a fine-grained understanding of usage always comes before designing the spaces.

Flexibility, portfolio, and sorting the trends

On the portfolio side, “core & flex” is establishing itself as a framework for arbitrating between stable and flexible space according to real usage, including in supply-constrained markets. The session Enterprise Location & Portfolio Strategy offered a concrete case study: SAP explained how its third-generation location strategy turns reactive footprint management into a real strategic lever for the business.

Finally, in a spirit very close to the Amsterdam debate on whether trends are “here to stay or just a fad,” the session Yay or Nay did the sorting: among new technologies and new ways of working, not all live up to their promises.

Our takeaway: from complexity to clarity

True to its theme, this Munich edition sought less to predict the future than to equip real estate teams to decide under uncertainty. On the workplace, a clear direction is emerging: prove the value, measure the impact, reconcile well-being with compliance, and design for the diversity of uses. All of these feed our thinking and guide the work we do to make our clients’ workspaces a real performance lever — today and tomorrow.