The Biggest Supply Chain Risks of 2026 (and how to navigate them)

2026 has kicked off with a familiar tension: markets are volatile, capacity is tight, and decisions made today can lock in costs for the year ahead. Shippers are already weighing the impact of an early Chinese New Year, the reopening of the Red Sea, tender season pressures, and sudden policy shifts – such as President Trump postponing planned 2026 tariff increases. Each of these factors alone can affect freight rates, contract timing, and network planning — together, they create a complex, high-stakes environment.

For procurement and supply chain leaders, the challenge isn’t just predicting what might go wrong. It’s making smarter decisions amid constant uncertainty: knowing when to tender, when to lock in rates, and when to remain flexible.

Delay a tender post-CNY and you could miss low rates.

Lock in too early and you risk paying above-market prices if the Red Sea reopening floods capacity.

Misread policy shifts and surges in demand could leave you squeezed on both cost and space.

In short, the stakes are high, and the margin for error is thin. This year’s top 10 risks aren’t just about external shocks — they’re about understanding how market timing, contract flexibility, and operational decisions interact to shape your entire supply chain.

The small shift that matters most in 2026: move from reacting to disruption, to planning for volatility as standard. With that mindset, you can turn uncertainty into actionable insight — and navigate the year with confidence.

1. Geopolitical Fragmentation and Trade Policy Volatility

Geopolitical risk continues to dominate the supply chain landscape in 2026:

1. Heightened geopolitical competition — new U.S.-led economic cooperation initiatives (like Pax Silica) aim to secure technology supply chains, especially semiconductors and AI-related components, pulling more countries into competitive blocs. 

2. Ongoing trade tensions & tariff uncertainty — import volumes into major markets like the U.S. are shrinking in key corridors as trade policy shifts persist. In fact, rapid shifts in trade policy, combined with geopolitical tensions, have accelerated “China+1” and nearshoring strategies, but often without equivalent infrastructure or capacity in alternative markets.

3. Weaponization concerns — Concerns around the weaponization of trade continue to intensify as governments increasingly use export controls, sanctions, and industrial policy to pursue geopolitical objectives. The automotive sector is particularly exposed due to its reliance on critical minerals (lithium, cobalt, nickel) and semiconductors.

What you can do:

1. Consider building a comprehensive geopolitical risk dashboard (including sanctions, tariff changes, export controls).

2. Diversify supplier regions to avoid concentrated exposure to one political bloc.

3. Bring trade compliance expertise into early procurement planning.

2. Economic Instability & Demand Shocks

After turbulent years of inflation, tariff obstacles, and demand oscillations, economic instability remains a top risk:

1. Most economic forecasts point to continued volatility through 2026, with pockets of weak growth, regional divergence, and sudden demand slowdowns or rebounds. For supply chains, this translates into persistent uncertainty around volumes, inventory levels, and capacity needs – making long-term planning increasingly difficult.

2. Consumer and industrial demand is now highly sensitive to interest rates, energy prices, and geopolitical events. Demand can contract or rebound faster than logistics networks can scale down or up, leaving shippers exposed to excess inventory, missed sales, or spot-market dependence.

3. Input costs – energy, labour, insurance, and compliance – remain elevated, even when demand softens. For many sectors, especially retail and manufacturing, margin pressure is compounded by limited ability to pass these costs on, forcing frequent pricing and sourcing reevaluations

Why this matters for logistics and procurement teams

Economic instability exposes the limits of rigid planning cycles and static contracts. Procurement teams are increasingly asked to balance cost control with resilience, while avoiding both over-commitment in weak markets and under-coverage during sudden rebounds. Traditional annual contracting models struggle to keep pace with this level of volatility.

Steps to mitigate:

1. Scenario plan for demand swings and build flexible contracts that allow capacity and price adjustments.

2. Use real-time intelligence on freight rates and macro indicators to avoid reactive cost blowouts.

3. Reduce the time between market change and commercial response. Faster access to reliable data enables procurement and logistics teams to act proactively rather than defensively.

3. AI and Emerging Technology

While adoption of AI and automation is accelerating across supply chain functions – planning, forecasting, quality, procurement, and risk management – multiple studies over the last 12–18 months (BCG, Gartner, McKinsey) have converged on the same uncomfortable truth: only a small minority of AI initiatives are delivering material, provable ROI.

In supply chain and logistics, this gap is particularly acute because AI systems are only as good as the data, assumptions, and integration layers beneath them.

Where AI breaks down in logistics

• Fragmented, low-quality data
  Logistics data is often siloed across carriers, forwarders, ports, ERPs, TMSs, and spreadsheets. When AI models are trained on incomplete or inconsistent inputs, they can produce forecasts that appear sophisticated but are fundamentally misleading — creating false confidence rather than better decisions.

• Volatile environments reduce model reliability
  AI performs best in stable, repeatable systems. Freight markets are neither. Geopolitical disruption, port congestion, trade policy shifts, and demand shocks mean historical patterns break down quickly. Models trained on “normal” conditions often fail precisely when decision-makers need them most.

• Automation without operational alignment
  In logistics, AI-driven recommendations (routing, inventory placement, carrier selection) often clash with real-world constraints like capacity shortages, contract terms, service reliability, or regulatory compliance. Without tight integration into operational workflows, insights remain theoretical rather than actionable.

• ROI diluted by pilot sprawl
  Many organisations run multiple AI pilots in parallel – forecasting here, visibility there – without clear ownership or success criteria. The result is experimentation without scale, cost without impact. 

How to navigate

1. Invest in data quality and governance first — AI without good foundational data can make things worse, not better.

2. Treat AI pilots like any other investment: clear hypotheses, defined success metrics, and a path to scale only once value is demonstrated.

3. Use AI to augment judgment, not replace it. In logistics, human context (market dynamics, carrier behaviour, geopolitical risk) remains essential. The most effective AI supports better decisions rather than automating them blindly.

4. Uncertainty Around the Red Sea 

Despite there being little chance of a full return in the first half of 2026, the Red Sea trade corridor is re-emerging as a critical factor in global ocean logistics. After nearly two years of vessels rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope, carriers began cautiously resuming Suez Canal transits in late 2025. Maersk’s full-loop return signalled growing confidence, but CMA CGM later reversed some services, highlighting continued schedule unpredictability.

While a broader return to Suez Canal routing is welcomed by some, the significantly shorten transit times –compared to Cape of Good Hope diversions – would create a different problem for others. For supply chains that have recalibrated around longer lead times, that compression could create temporary imbalances. Cargo may arrive earlier than planned, putting pressure on warehouse capacity, inland transport, and inventory planning. For businesses operating with tight storage footprints or closely managed working capital, even a one to two week shift in arrival windows can have cost implications.

At the same time, a rapid and near-universal return to Suez could increase the risk of vessel bunching at major European gateways. If sailing times shorten faster than port and inland networks can adapt, arrival peaks may intensify. Faster voyages do not automatically translate into smoother cargo flows. Without phased adjustments, parts of the supply chain could experience renewed congestion.

This ongoing uncertainty is influencing freight markets: early 2026 contract rates for Asia–Europe trades have softened, while spreads between spot and long-term rates reflect market caution. For shippers, this volatility impacts inventory planning, capacity allocation, and procurement strategies, as routing decisions now carry both cost and operational risk.

Actions for shippers

• Monitor carrier routing decisions closely to anticipate schedule changes and potential disruptions.

• Scenario-plan for Red Sea vs Cape routes, including lead times, capacity constraints, and cost implications.

• Incorporate flexibility into contracts, balancing rate opportunities with operational resilience.

• Leverage the Xeneta Carrier Comparison Scorecard to select the right service at the right price – balancing cost with operational considerations such as historical reliability on selected port pairs.

• Shippers could also go one step further and turn to exchange-traded futures. This enables shippers, forwarders and carriers to hedge container freight rate volatility with daily price transparency and central clearing security.

Track the Red Sea return in real time: Visit Xeneta’s Red Sea newsfeed for regular updates, analysis, and expert insights on how evolving routes impact freight markets and contract strategies. Consider joining our upcoming Red Sea Special webinar too. 

5. Cybersecurity: Expanded Attack Surfaces

Cyber risk has shifted from being an IT issue to a core operational and supply chain concern. As logistics and procurement ecosystems become more digitised and interconnected, attack surfaces have expanded well beyond a company’s own infrastructure. In fact, a 2025 SecurityScorecard report found that 35.5% of all data breaches in 2024 originated from third-party compromises, up significantly from prior years, highlighting how attackers increasingly target supply chain partners rather than primary systems.

Nearly half (46%) of 500 UK organisations surveyed also reported experiencing at least two supply chain cyber incidents in the past year (Risk Ledger), underscoring how common these breaches have become.

Jaguar Land Rover was one such example. In September 2025, the multinational automotive manufacturer was forced to halt production and retail operations following a cyber incident, disrupting vehicle manufacturing and its wider supply chain for several weeks. In a separate incident, a cyberattack on an airline technology provider triggered system failures across major European airports, forcing a switch to manual processes and causing significant delays to both passenger and cargo handling (also, Sep 2025).

These incidents highlighted that the impact is no longer limited to data loss. A single cyber event can disrupt manufacturing schedules, halt deliveries, force manual workarounds, and undermine planning, procurement, and customer service simultaneously. As supply chains rely on interconnected TMS, ERP, visibility, and booking platforms, the blast radius of an attack continues to grow. 

How Xeneta can help

While Xeneta does not provide cybersecurity services, freight market intelligence and benchmarking can help organisations make more informed, resilient supply chain decisions:

• Identify alternative carriers, routes, and sourcing options if partners or regions become temporarily unavailable.

• Monitor market capacity and rate volatility to anticipate cost and operational impacts of supply disruptions.

• Support scenario planning and procurement strategies that reduce reliance on a single partner or corridor.

And maybe, consider expanding third-party cybersecurity vetting and ongoing monitoring across logistics providers, software vendors, and key suppliers.

6. Supply Chain Fragmentation and De-Globalisation Pressures

Post-pandemic momentum toward regionalisation and nearshoring is now mainstream. Take the automotive industry as an example, to reduce disruption risk, OEMs are pushing Tier 1s and Tier 2s to localise production and sourcing closer to vehicle assembly plants. While this shortens supply lines, it also fragments volume across regions and platforms.

For suppliers, that creates new risks:

1. Lower economies of scale as global volumes are split across regional plants

2. Higher unit and logistics costs in nearshore markets

3. More complex inbound networks, especially for Tier 2s supplying multiple Tier 1s

4. Hybrid supply chains, where “local” production still depends on globally sourced electronics, materials, and sub-components

The result: supply chains that look more resilient on paper, but are harder to plan, more expensive to run, and less flexible when demand shifts.

What to watch in 2026:

• Total landed cost visibility – Nearshoring reduces transit risk, but fragmented sourcing can hide higher unit and logistics costs. Shippers need to track not just freight, but duties, insurance, warehousing, and inventory costs across regions.

• Regional freight volatility – Even short supply lines are exposed to local congestion, labour issues, and regulatory changes. Smaller regional lanes can be more volatile than large global routes, impacting planning and contract negotiations.

• Supplier network complexity – Tier 2 suppliers feeding multiple Tier 1s may struggle to balance production across plants, creating bottlenecks or sudden shortages. Hybrid chains relying on globally sourced sub-components remain vulnerable to geopolitical and trade shocks.

• Planning flexibility vs rigidity – While regionalisation is intended to reduce disruption, highly fragmented networks require more sophisticated demand forecasting, scenario planning, and agile inventory management. Inflexible processes will amplify cost and service risks.

• Contracting and procurement strategy – With volume spread across multiple regions, long-term contracts may no longer capture the full risk picture. Procurement teams should consider hybrid strategies that balance regional stability with the ability to pivot when volumes, rates, or supplier performance shift.

7. Talent Gaps, Skills Shortages & Workforce Evolution  

While freight procurement remains a predominantly relationship-focused industry, the procurement and logistics talent gap continues to be a major constraint. Specialised skills in analytics, digitalisation, and risk management are in high demand, yet workforce pressures are slowing transformation initiatives – from digital adoption to flexible sourcing strategies – making it harder for organisations to fully leverage emerging market intelligence and freight optimisation tools. Indeed, Gartner predicts that 60% of supply chain digital adoption efforts will fail to deliver promised value by 2028 unless organisations invest in learning and development, underscoring the critical link between workforce capability and successful transformation.

Actionable steps for organisations

• Implement training, mentorship, and rotational programs to build T-shaped teams capable of bridging analytics, digital tools, and commercial decision-making.

• Streamline routine or administrative tasks through digital tools and automation, freeing staff to focus on higher-value activities such as scenario planning, supplier strategy, and contract optimisation.

• Use certification programs like the Xeneta Academy (launching 2026) to embed structured learning that helps teams upskill quickly and make more data-driven, resilient procurement decisions.

• Encourage teams to maintain currency in market trends, analytical methods, and risk mitigation strategies through ongoing internal knowledge sharing and external certification programs

8. Critical Material Dependencies & Resource Scarcity

Commodity and critical material risks are rising, with shortages increasingly flagged as systemic threats across multiple industries. Copper, for example, is essential for electrification and technology supply chains, and forecast deficits could reach millions of tonnes over the next decade, driven by surging demand for clean energy infrastructure, EV production, and high-tech electronics. Other critical inputs, such as rare earths, lithium, and semiconductors, face similar pressures, leaving automotive, aerospace, and renewable energy sectors vulnerable to supply disruption and price volatility.

These risks are compounded by geopolitical tensions, export restrictions, and concentration of production in a small number of countries. Even well-diversified supply chains can face sudden bottlenecks if a key input is disrupted or rapidly re-priced.

What to prioritise

• Identify which suppliers, regions, and product lines rely on scarce or concentrated materials to help map exposure to critical inputs

• Engage strategically with suppliers, industrial consortia, and recycling initiatives to secure reliable access and shared risk mitigation.

• Include material scarcity and price volatility in scenario planning, long-term contracts, and contingency strategies to avoid reactive procurement shocks.
  
  

9. Regulatory Complexity & Compliance Overload

Compliance requirements continue to grow in both volume and complexity, adding new layers of operational and commercial risk. From environmental disclosures and sustainability reporting to e-invoicing and customs mandates, organisations face increased administrative burden and higher potential for delays. These pressures can slow procurement cycles, complicate supplier onboarding, and create knock-on effects across global logistics networks.

Mitigation strategies

• Use Xeneta's real-time freight intelligence to model potential impacts of delays or lane-specific constraints caused by regulatory changes.

• Incorporate freight cost and transit variability into scenario planning for contracts or rate negotiations.

• Benchmark rates and performance across alternative routes or carriers to understand the cost of compliance-driven delays. 

10. Aging Infrastructure & Logistics Bottlenecks

Infrastructure risk is an increasingly prominent concern as ports, bridges, rail networks, and transportation corridors face rising throughput and ageing systems. In March 2024, the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge near Baltimore severed key freight arteries and forced carriers to reroute cargo at scale, demonstrating how a single failure can ripple across supply chains.

Similar pressures are evident in major European ports such as Rotterdam, Antwerp, and Hamburg, where extended berth wait times and constrained capacity underscore the challenges of infrastructure upgrades lagging behind cargo growth. Across the U.S., thousands of structurally deficient bridges and stretches of highway further amplify delays and transport costs, while extreme weather linked to climate change accelerates wear and raises the likelihood of multi-billion-dollar disruptions in 2026.

These bottlenecks have tangible consequences: shipments are delayed, costs rise, and service reliability erodes, particularly in high-volume trade lanes and urban logistics hubs where flexibility is limited.

What to consider

While Xeneta cannot fix infrastructure, freight market intelligence can help shippers anticipate bottlenecks, compare carrier performance, and design contracts with resilience in mind. Consider:

• Evaluating multi-modal routing options to reduce reliance on bottlenecked nodes and improve resilience.

• Monitoring lane reliability and transit trends using real-time freight intelligence to anticipate disruptions.

• Comparing carrier performance to understand which providers consistently meet schedules under constrained conditions.

• Incorporating freight insights into contract strategy to build flexibility and resilience into procurement decisions.

Closing Thoughts: One Small Shift for 2026

In 2026, resilience will be built through risk-ready decisions, made earlier.

Supply chains now operate in a world that is less predictable and more interconnected than ever. Geopolitics, data complexity, cyber risk, and infrastructure constraints aren’t isolated threats — they interact, amplify one another, and expose weaknesses in how decisions are made.

The small shift that matters most:

Move from reacting to disruption to planning for volatility as standard.

That shift doesn’t require a complete overhaul. It requires changing how risk is treated in everyday decisions:

1. Using forward-looking intelligence, not last year’s assumptions

2. Building flexibility into contracts before the market moves

3. Trusting data over instinct when pressure rises

4. Stress-testing scenarios as part of normal planning, not crisis response

Make that shift, and supply chain resilience becomes a capability.