Winter ‘26 is here, can you believe it? This release window feels like it’s gone by in the blink of an eye. There’s no doubt that the triannual Salesforce releases are full of fantastic features and exciting updates, but sometimes, there’s just too much good stuff to wrap your head around all at once.
The team at Salesforce Ben are determined to help you get across the most impactful parts of the release in easily digestible, discipline-based chunks. But what if you’re interested in the most exciting, anticipated, and important parts of the release all in one spot? If that’s you, look no further!
Additionally, I have curated what I believe to be the three most important release updates for the majority of Salesforce customers to pay attention to. You’ll need to assess how they will impact your org before the Winter ‘26 release goes live to minimize disruption across your business.
Winter ‘26 Features: The Top 3 for Each Discipline
Top Admin Features
Mariel has eagerly torn through the release notes to bring ten of the most impactful ones to you.
Type-Ahead Search in List Views
In most applications, and indeed in multiple other areas of Salesforce, you can simply begin entering a value with your keyboard to skip through a multitude of values. Unfortunately, configuring List View columns was exempt from this – that is, until Winter ‘26 introduced the ability to type ahead in the Available Fields and Visible Fields lists when configuring List View columns!
Enhanced Field History Tracking in Setup
Winter ‘26 gives admins a well-enhanced method of organizing field tracking with the new Field History Tracking page in the Setup Menu. Serving now as a one-stop shop for all Field History Tracking management in your Salesforce org.
Unassign Permission Set Licenses Automatically
Sick of being out of app licenses when you know you’ve got more, and then realizing the issue is simply that you forgot to remove a Permission Set license? Winter ‘26 has you covered! Now, when you remove a related Permission Set or Permission Set Group, the Permission Set License will be automatically removed along with it.
Top Marketing Features
Our marketing extraordinaire, Lucy, has compiled a list of top marketing updates that Winter ‘26 brings to you.
Content Builder Agent
The new Content Builder Agent in Winter ‘26 works alongside humans to build and optimize marketing content. Whether it’s crafting punchy subject lines, text messages, or email body content, the Content Builder Agent is a new tool that you don’t want to ignore.
Reusable Content Blocks
Set up Content Blocks that can be reused across multiple pieces of content and used to ensure consistency across the board, building a stronger brand for your business and a better experience for your prospects.
Landing Pages
An assortment of new features is coming to Landing Pages, including the ability to set default values or mark fields as hidden, use merge fields to populate known information, capture information from external forms using form handlers, as well as additional HTML tags and element support for more streamlined page creation.
Top Developer Features
Peter assembles the eight most impactful enhancements that will have developers scrambling with excitement.
Trusted Mode Increases LWC Browser API Access
Trusted Mode in Winter ‘26 empowers developers to leverage third-party JavaScript libraries in Salesforce without the need for Locker Service. This is an optional feature that unlocks some of the enforced securities that Salesforce has kept locked down to date, and lets developers take advantage of JavaScript libraries that are trusted and uploaded as static resources.
Unified Testing Results
A new Application Test Execution page has been added to the Setup Menu in Winter ‘26, and brings about the ability to run Apex and Flow tests in the same place.
Simplified Project Package References
Streamline multilevel package dependencies in Winter ‘26 with the new calculateTransitiveDependencies parameter, which allows inference of related packages rather than explicitly stating them one by one.
Top Flow Features
Tim says run, don’t walk, to apply the following Flow features in your org in Winter ‘26.
Screen Flows Get New Debug Experience
Winter ‘26 extends the new Flow Debug experience to Screen Flow, as well as polishing it up by adding new tabs and a Screen/Flow Canvas tabbed UI.
Action Hub in Automation App
The Automation App has a new home for any and all invocable actions in Winter ‘26. Action Hub presents a menu that gives you access to see the actions and where they’re used.
Send Email New Recipient Manager
Combine email addresses together as recipients, either from an individual source, a collection, or both, with the updated Send Email Flow Action in Winter ‘26.
Top Service Features
Mariel’s back for more Winter ‘26 goodness, this time compiling a list of the top features for Service users.
Gain Better Insights into Case Team Member Contributions
Create more valuable service reports with the ability to enable role-based reporting and see team roles in reports.
Smarter SLA Management With Milestone and Routing Enhancements
Far more flexible SLA management with the ability to prioritize cases based on milestone time left, pause individual milestones, and prioritize work by start target date.
Improved Surveys for Better Customer Insights
Winter ‘26 introduces changes that make the survey experience a lot better. You can now customize how partially completed surveys are handled, limit selections on multi-choice questions, and translate Knowledge Feedback forms.
Top Sales Features
Last but not least, Andreea has assembled a list of the top features that Winter ‘26 brings to Sales Cloud.
AI-Powered Account Research
Use Generative AI to provide your sales teams with insights into their customers in next to no time at all with Winter ‘26.
List View Enhancements
In addition to the Type-Ahead search that has already been mentioned, Winter ‘26 also makes the multi-column sorting functionality that we saw in the previous release generally available. Users can configure their List Views to be sorted by multiple columns, and can prioritize which columns should be sorted first.
Faster Slack Channel Creation from Salesforce Records
Now in Winter ‘26, you can simply start typing a message in the Slack component to have a new Salesforce channel created for you.
Release Updates You Need to Address
Confirm Verified Email Addresses for Users Created in 2016 and Earlier (Enforced)
Only users with verified email addresses will be able to send emails from Salesforce to comply with the latest email security standards. This only applies to users created on or before November 1, 2016.
Restrict User Access to Run Flows (Enforced)
Only users with the correct access to run flows will be able to do so. This also deprecates the FlowSites org permission, which gave all users in the org the ability to run any flow.
Update References to Legacy Host Names (Automatically Enabled)
Legacy (non-enhanced) Salesforce host name redirection ends for all production and demo orgs in Winter ‘26.
Summary
This goes without saying: there are so many more features that Winter ‘26 brings to the table that you can take advantage of in your Salesforce org, but the team at Salesforce Ben have tirelessly worked to bring some of the features we believe to be most impactful for a majority of users. Thank you for joining us as we unpacked these coming changes!
We’d love to hear how you’re planning to take advantage of some of these changes! If you’re working on some new functionality and planning on taking advantage of some of the Winter ‘26 changes, let us know in the comments below, or by responding to this post on social media or tagging us in a post.
