The Community Growth & Benchmark Report 2026

Benchmarks, trends, and real-world case studies drawn from 186 community professionals and 1,000+ Hivebrite communities. For the people building communities and the people betting on them.

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Why this report matters

Reaching your members, customers, or supporters used to be a whole lot easier. Now it’s expensive, unpredictable, and increasingly out of your control.

  • Organic reach is collapsing. Social media algorithms increasingly deprioritise brand content, leaving organisations without a direct line to their audiences.
  • Digital advertising costs are rising while returns diminish, making owned channels more important than ever.
  • “Dark social” is making impact invisible. Word-of-mouth shared via private messaging platforms is often a community’s most powerful distribution channel, and also its least trackable.

The organisations that crack community are building a direct line to their audience that no algorithm controls. And right now, trust is the thing most organisations are desperate to rebuild. In the 2024 PwC ‘Trust in US Business’ report, 90% of business executives believed customers highly trusted their companies. Only 30% of consumers said the same.

Key findings preview

  • 89.1% of respondents expect community to take on a larger role in their organisation over the next 12 to 24 months.
  • 56.5% name “stronger relationships and trust” as their single most important goal, ranking it above retention, lifetime value, and revenue. Only 5.4% cite revenue influence — which says something about what community professionals believe they are building.
  • 76.9% say events (online or in-person) are the single biggest driver of meaningful participation. Peer-to-peer support (40.8%) and discussion forums (37.4%) follow, but nothing else comes close.
  • 53.7% don’t compare metrics between members and non-members. 19% don’t consistently track metrics at all, even as 77.6% say they’re confident explaining community’s value to senior leadership.

What you’ll gain from the report

This report brings together exclusive survey data, real-world case studies and community management trends to give community builders a clear picture of where the industry stands and where it is heading. Inside, you will find:

  • Benchmarks on community maturity, measurement gaps and budget realities, drawn from 186 senior marketers, community managers and C-suite leaders surveyed in early 2026.
  • Five data-backed trends reshaping community management right now.

Real community examples

The report features stories from some of the world’s most recognised organisations using community to drive real outcomes:

  • CERN grew its alumni community from zero to 10,000 members across 120+ countries in seven years, with 85% of activated members engaging weekly.
  • The Obama Foundation built a peer-to-peer network connecting 1,200+ leaders across nearly 150 countries, replacing manual spreadsheets with a fully searchable, collaborative platform.
  • Blanchard built a post-training community across 70+ countries that grew to 4,700 members in its first year, with a 76% activation rate and members reporting feeling twice as supported in reaching their goals.
  • Parkrun mobilised 10 million members and gets more than 350,000 people active every single Saturday across around 900 UK locations.

Real trends from Hivebrite communities

The report shares five trends reshaping how community managers work. Drawn from data across more than 1,000 Hivebrite communities in 2025, they include:

  1. 2x more groups per community: Members are gravitating toward smaller, purpose-driven spaces where real engagement happens.
  2. 30% of communities are using APIs: Communities are becoming the main connection point between organisations and their members.
  3. 2x more users per admin: Community teams are managing more with the same headcount, making better tooling and clearer governance a top priority.

About the report

The Community Growth & Benchmark Report 2026 brings together two complementary sources of data: a survey of 186 marketers, community managers, and C-suite leaders, conducted by Hivebrite and Wonderly in early 2026, and an anonymised analysis of real trends across Hivebrite customer communities.

Download the full report and see where your community stands.