The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer, released on 18 January 2026, surveyed 33,938 people across 28 countries in late 2025. Its headline finding is that seven in ten respondents are unwilling or hesitant to trust someone with different values, social views, background or information sources. Edelman calls this insularity, and reports it is highest in developed markets: Japan (90 per cent), Germany (81), the UK (76), Canada (73) and the United States (70).
The numbers that matter for marketers
Employers are the most trusted institution. Employees put trust in their own employer at 78 per cent, 14 points ahead of business in general (64) and 25 ahead of government (53). Edelman argues employers, and CEOs in particular, are expected to broker trust between groups that do not trust each other.
Optimism keeps falling. Only 32 per cent believe the next generation will be better off, down four points on the previous year, with the sharpest drops in India and China.
The income gap in trust has widened. The gap between high- and low-income respondents was six points in 2012 and is 15 points in 2026, reaching 29 points in the United States.
Our read
If audiences will not extend trust to anyone outside their own circle, the brand messages that travel are the ones carried by people already inside it: employees, customers and local voices. Employee advocacy stops being an HR nicety and becomes the cheapest credible media a company owns. It also explains why answer engines and creators, which present as individual voices, are taking share of attention from institutions that present as institutions.
Source
Edelman Trust Barometer 2026, full report and country breakdowns. Press summary: Edelman, 18 January 2026.
