Introduction

It has been a year since we published our 2025 State of U.S. Sustainability Reports. The sustainability landscape remains marked by heightened scrutiny and uncertainty, as ongoing political conflicts and evolving global regulation continue to shape the expectations of key stakeholders.

For example, in the U.S., Republican state attorneys general continued to scrutinize company participation in climate initiatives, plastics and packaging and other sustainability-related activities. At the same time, California moved forward with mandatory climate disclosure requirements and Democratic states have scrutinized company rollbacks of diversity initiatives. Outside the U.S., the European Union continued efforts to simplify its sustainability reporting regime, while additional jurisdictions moved toward adopting disclosure requirements aligned with international frameworks (e.g., International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB)). Amid this ongoing uncertainty and confusion globally, U.S. companies largely stayed the course on their sustainability reporting in 2026.

To help companies plan for reporting in 2027, we analyzed 250 sustainability reports from S&P 500 companies published in 2026. In this report, we provide (i) our study methodology; (ii) our top 10 takeaways from 2026 sustainability reports; and (iii) key statistics of 2026 sustainability reports.

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