This blog was written by Ansgar Haase (CoE Lead HCM).
For HR teams running Oracle, Release 26C reads not like a routine quarterly update but more like an upgrade to an already mature application.
Two areas stand out. Redwood is no longer something you switch on. In 26C it becomes the default UI across core pages like Employment, Person, and Workforce Structures. And AI stops being something aside. It moves into the day-to-day work of your team.
The HCM Professional Activity Center, a single Redwood workspace where HR can search for workers, run quick actions, and manage journey communications in one place.
AI showing up where the work actually happens: AI-assisted job and position management, AI recommendations for key communications, and agents that can act as a task performer inside Journeys.
A new Work Relationship Info page, giving one consolidated view of a worker's details with edit and cancel actions in reach.
There are also smaller enhancements that will make many HR colleagues happy:
The advanced position search in assignments
The "Multiple Stage Performer Tasks" introduced for journeys
The AI-auto-fill of fields based on documents uploaded into the personal document storage
AI becomes a conversational partner across talent processes. The old text-suggestion helpers give way to fuller assistants and agents: four new goal assistants that draft objectives from role and last review, a natural-language talent search, and conversational assistants for succession planning, talent information, and talent calibration, plus AI summaries of talent-review meetings.
Routine admin gets automated away. Bulk editing of development goals, publishing objectives on a leader’s behalf across their whole area, mass-release notifications that actually reach employees, auto-save on review documents, and Fast Formula-driven goal-plan assignment all take manual effort out of running goals and reviews at scale.
Finer control and governance for administrators. AI writing help can now be switched on or off by role and comment type, you can limit who appears as a feedback giver, keep performance-improvement plans hidden until released, and drive profile fields with rules so that the system follows your policies rather than a one-size-fits-all default.
A clearer experience and cleaner data for employees and managers. A preparation step aligns what will be assessed before a review begins, feedback givers see the role they were asked in, job and position descriptions appear on career pages, career preferences are unified into one place, and meeting data now carries the time of day for teams spread across time zones.
26C is the release where the modern Oracle HCM Cloud is no longer a project you opt into but the default you plan around.
Some of these changes are auto-enabled and may impact existing workflows, approval rules, or page layouts. The Broadpin HCM team can walk you through what is changing, what needs attention, and how to prepare your environment before the update lands. Get in touch to schedule a review.
