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One of the most persistent myths in voiceover is that your voice is the thing you’re selling.

It’s understandable. The word is right there in the job title. Voice-over. Voice actor. Voice talent. Voice this, voice that. We talk about tone, range, texture, warmth, grit, authority, youth, maturity, resonance, conversationality, (I may have coined a word,) and all the other sonic ingredients that make up the instrument.

But at the highest levels, your voice is not really the product.

Your taste is. And not your taste in music, clothes, or food, which in my case would be a crash course in why the ’80’s went out of style.

That may sound counterintuitive at first. After all, a great voice still matters. Of course it does. A compelling sound can open doors. It can get you noticed. It can make someone stop scrolling, stop scrubbing through auditions, or stop checking email long enough to say, “Okay, who is that?”

But once you move beyond the most basic threshold of professional viability, vocal quality is rarely the whole game. Thousands of people have attractive voices. Thousands of people can sound like an asylum of alliterative adjectives, (which would be a great band name but there goes my taste in music again.) There are many actors who live in similar vocal neighborhoods.

What separates them is not merely the neighborhood.

It’s the interior design.

Two actors can read the exact same piece of copy with roughly the same vocal range and demographic profile. Same gender. Same age range. Same general sound. Same mic quality. Same room quality. Same basic “professional voice actor” competence.

One read feels alive.

The other feels like HR sent an email with the subject line: “Friendly Reminder: Authenticity Initiative Launches Monday.”

That difference is taste.

Taste is the instinct that tells you where the joke actually lives. Not where the punctuation tells you it lives. Not where a less imaginative actor would put a big shiny bow on it. Where it actually lives.

Taste is knowing when sincerity needs to be held lightly instead of squeezed until it turns into oatmeal.

Taste is understanding that “conversational” does not mean “casual mush,” and “premium” does not mean “slowly describing a watch to a fireplace.”

Taste is rhythm. Taste is restraint. Taste is knowing when to leave air in a line and when to keep the momentum moving. Taste is knowing when the copy wants charm, when it wants clarity, when it wants a little mischief, and when it wants you to get out of the way entirely.

This is where many developing voice actors get stuck. They work very hard on the sound of the read. They chase the tone. They try to sound friendly, confident, warm, cool, real, edgy, funny, luxurious, grounded, whatever the spec says. And there is nothing wrong with that as a starting point.

But specs are often blunt instruments. They point in a direction. They rarely tell you how to walk there.

“Conversational” could mean relaxed and dry. It could mean intimate and thoughtful. It could mean quick, smart, and lightly amused. It could mean a person making a confession, a friend sharing a shortcut, or a brand trying very hard not to sound like a brand while absolutely still being a brand.

Your job is to interpret the moment.

That’s taste.

The strongest actors are not just executing vocal qualities. They are making decisions. Often small ones. Almost invisible ones. A slightly unexpected pause. A smile that appears for half a word and disappears before it becomes salesy. A little drop in energy that makes the next phrase feel more honest. A refusal to overplay the obvious joke. A choice to let a serious line stay simple instead of dragging it into melodrama by the ankles.

This is why “range” is so often misunderstood.

Range is not just doing six cartoon voices, three accents, and one wizard who sounds like he has opinions about soup. Wizards can be like that. Especially bearded ones. Jerks. That can be useful, sure. But in commercial, narration, promo, and even much of animation and gaming, some of the most valuable range is emotional and interpretive.

Can you shift from warmth to authority without changing your entire vocal identity?

Can you make a line feel fun without making it goofy?

Can you create tension without shouting?

Can you sound premium without sounding sedated?

Can you make copy feel human even when it was clearly written by a committee of twelve people named Strategy?

That is the work.

And the beautiful thing is that taste can be developed. Taste comes from listening deeply. Watching great work. Studying timing. Understanding genre. Reading widely. Living enough life to know what people sound like when they are amused, wounded, skeptical, thrilled, tired, in love, lying politely, or trying not to cry in a grocery store parking lot. Eleven bucks for a bag of nuggets? WTF?

It also comes from self-direction. From asking better questions.

What is this line doing?

Why is it here?

What changed from the sentence before it?

Where is the turn?

What does the audience need to feel?

What would be too much?

What would be not enough?

Where is the human being inside this copy?

The actor who asks those questions will almost always be more interesting than the actor who simply asks, “What should this sound like?”

Because “what should this sound like?” keeps you trapped at the surface.

“What does this mean?” takes you to the product.

And the product is your taste.

Your voice is the instrument, yes. Keep it healthy. Train it. Learn it. Respect it. Know what it does well and where it betrays you if you get lazy.

But your taste is the reason someone chooses you when a dozen other people could technically hit the same notes.

Your taste is the thing that makes the read feel inevitable.

Because you understood the assignment underneath the assignment.

Because, for one brief and beautiful moment, the copy stopped sounding like copy.

And started sounding like someone worth listening to.

 

Voiceover has always been a strange little business: part craft, part sales, part luck, part “who sent this audition at 4:47 p.m. and why do they need it by 5:15?” But by 2030, the industry will likely be even stranger.

Not worse. Just wider, faster, more fragmented, and more relationship-driven in some corners while becoming almost algorithmic in others.

The future of VO will belong to several distinct career types, each playing a different game.

1. Returning to the Old Ways

At the highest end of the business, I think we are already seeing a return to something that feels almost old-school to many who started in the past ten years: agents, casting directors, union jobs, trusted rosters, and actual relationships.

As the lower and middle tiers of the market get more crowded, noisier, and more automated, premium buyers will want safety. They will want taste. They will want someone who can say, “This talent is right, available, professional, and is aware of things like conflicts and AI usage safety.”

That means agents and casting directors will matter more, not less. Union work will also remain a marker of seriousness for certain categories: major animation, national campaigns, games, high-end narration, trailers, etc… In a wild-west market, structure becomes valuable again.

In that world, the talent who wins is not just the person with a killer read. It is the person with reputation, relationships, emotional intelligence, and staying power. Very 1990s. Very human. What’s old is new again.

2. Volume Chasers

At the same time, there will be more work than ever. The catch? A lot of it will be smaller, faster, more targeted, and more specific.

We will see more geo-fenced ads, micro-campaigns, localized audio, personalized explainer content, AI-assisted production that still uses human VO, short-form branded media, interactive experiences, and formats we do not have clean names for yet.

That creates opportunity, but not always at glamorous rates. Some VO careers will be built on volume: booking often, turning work around quickly, staying organized, and understanding how to make smaller jobs add up to a full-time living.

These talent will need great workflow, clean audio, rate discipline, and the ability to avoid burnout. Volume chasing is not desperate. Done well, it is a business model.

3. Influencer-Adjacent VOs

Then there are the voice talents who become known beyond the booth.

Not necessarily mega-celebrities. Not necessarily “content creators” in the exhausting, dance-on-command sense. But people with a recognizable presence, point of view, niche audience, or signature sound.

Think of talents like Hunter Peterson, Tawny Platis, and Stefan Johnson. Their visibility creates gravity. Brands, producers, and fans already know something about them before the booking conversation begins. That matters.

By 2030, voice actors with audiences will have an advantage, especially when brands want authenticity, built-in reach, or a voice that carries cultural familiarity. The following does not replace the craft. It amplifies it.

The best version of this career type is not “look at me.” It is “you know what I bring.”

4. Marketing Masters

Finally, the hustle will not die. It never has.

The talent who learns how to find and serve corporate narration, medical narration, e-learning, niche explainers, local and regional commercials, internal communications, and specialized industries like legal narration, defense narration, kids learning, etc… will continue to thrive.

This is not always the flashiest lane, but it is one of the most durable. Companies will still need to explain, train, sell, onboard, teach, and reassure. Someone has to voice all of that and if the content actually matters it won’t be some clanker, but rather a real person getting real pay, especially as AI gets more expensive, less popular, more SaaS-based, and more resource-intensive.

The Marketing Master knows how to research prospects, write a useful email, follow up without being annoying, maintain a CRM, understand client needs, and deliver like a pro. They are not waiting for the industry to discover them. They are building a client base one smart conversation at a time.

The Takeaway

There will be lanes. Some will be relationship-based. Some will be high-volume. Some will be personality-driven. Some will be built through direct marketing and old-fashioned persistence.

The key is knowing which game you are actually playing. And maybe playing more than one if you can keep up.

Because the future of voiceover will still reward talent. But it will reward clear strategy even more.

In the immortal words of Alanis Morissette, life has a funny way……

And, isn’t it ironic that one of the results of the AI panic sown by so many “experts” and headless chicken types in the voiceover world is that, now, as buyers begin to actively run away from AI voices, the departure of many mid-tier talent from the marketplace, coupled with a slowdown in new entries into the marketplace since the pandemic influx of 2020-2022, has left an unexpected void and supply problem when it comes to solid voice actors in the workaday genres of Corporate/Industrial Narration, E-Learning, Medical Narration, Explainer Videos, and other similar niches.

It’s not quite “the ground floor,” but non-broadcast narration was one of the most popular genres for new voice actors to jump into during the late teens and early ’20s, and for good reason; It is work that can be almost entirely driven by direct marketing and hustle, which means barriers to entry are lower, and pay tends to be solid.

As more talent came into the business between 2018-2022, these genres started to become more saturated than they had been in the past, with the exception of Medical Narration. While never nearing the saturation level of the most popular types of VO like commercial, animation, and gaming, there was definitely more competition than before.

And then, the AI panic hit.

While in reality AI has impacted very little high-end work and far less of the low-end work than we probably expected as the threat emerged, the absolute terror being sewn by the usual naysayers and cohorts of new ones, coupled with the glut of pandemic-era talent fighting over the middle of the market, led many new and even established VO’s to throw in the towel over the past couple of years.

Now, we’re hearing stories almost daily of buyers who have been burned by AI, (and mostly not because it isn’t good enough….there’s some solid AI VO out there….but because end-users are rebelling en masse against AI filling principal creative roles,) flocking back to human talent and rapidly sending the prospects of parasitic AI VO companies and certain P2P’s that went all-in on the technology crashing. It has gotten to the point where voice actors now have to be careful when auditioning for non-broadcast genres where we once counseled precise editing and spit-shining to actually err on the side of a little imperfection, leaving in natural breaths, and little to no processing……much like the conventional wisdom has been in broadcast genre auditions for years. If your audition, or even your final product once hired, sounds too flawless, it is becoming more and more common for paranoid clients who have been told NO AI!!! by their end-users to accuse human VO’s of cheating by using an AI clone.

It’s why organizations like Micah Voraritskul’s Verified Human (https://www.verifiedhuman.info/) are popping up….and why more and more voice over artists are mentioning in standard submission templates that they have never consented to cloning their voice. As many of us predicted, the market for talent who have not partaken of the forbidden fruit is growing, and even for those who have, the ability to demonstrate that you’re not just a digital replica is becoming more and more important.

With the disappearance of talent run out of the business by overcooked fear of AI, and the natural washing out of many pandemic-era entries, non-broadcast narration suddenly feels a lot like 2015 again, just with generally higher budgets.

If you held the line and stayed in the game, hopefully you’re seeing your stubborn optimism pay off. And if you’re looking for an entry point that’s not as populated, narration genres are as strong as ever. 2026 has been a pivotal year for voiceover proving its longevity and durability. Here’s to a rising tide!

The voiceover conference calendar for 2026 is already taking shape, and if the early announcements are any indication, it’s going to be a busy year for anyone serious about growing their VO career. What’s interesting isn’t just the number of events on the slate…….it’s how clearly each one has carved out its own identity. Whether you’re looking for big-room energy, focused business strategy, or something more intimate, there’s a gathering designed to meet you where you are.

Self-interest aside, LOL, it’s hard to talk about the VO conference landscape without starting with VO Atlanta 2026. Scheduled for March 26–29 at the Hilton Atlanta Airport, it remains the industry’s gravitational center. Every year it seems to get a little bigger and a little more comprehensive, and 2026 will be no different. With hundreds of hours of programming and well over a thousand attendees expected, VO Atlanta continues to be the place where the entire ecosystem shows up……. talent, agents, casting directors, coaches, and tech experts all under one roof.

What keeps VO Atlanta relevant, though, isn’t just its size. It’s the breadth. You can spend one hour deep in performance technique and the next sitting in on a marketing or AI discussion that directly impacts how we all work going forward. For many voice actors…. especially those newer to the conference circuit …… it remains the closest thing the industry has to a full immersion experience.

Not long after Atlanta wraps, VOcation returns April 23–26 in Curaçao, and the shift in tone is noticeable in the best possible way. VOcation has always leaned heavily into the business side of voiceover, and that focus continues to resonate with working talent who already understand the basics of performance and want to build something sustainable. The destination setting doesn’t hurt either. There’s something about stepping away from your normal workspace that tends to open people up …….. conversations go deeper, connections feel more intentional, and the learning often sticks in a different way. VOcation isn’t trying to be the biggest event on the calendar. It’s trying to be useful.

By early summer, Get Outta Your Booth returns June 26–28 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, offering yet another flavor of professional development. GOYB is one of the more approachable conferences in the space. It tends to attract a mix of emerging and working talent who want practical information without the overwhelm that can come with the mega-events. There’s a strong community feel to this one, and for many attendees that accessibility is exactly the point. Not every growth moment needs to happen in a room of a thousand people.

That same weekend, from June 24-27, across the country in beautiful Washington State, the VO Summit: Pacific Northwest Conference debuts with a strong lineup of plugged-in speakers and a boutique setting in an absolutely stunning location. It’s a welcoming environment with a focus on connection, learning, and career growth designed to maximize the attendee-to-presenter ration and create a bespoke vibe. 

Across the Atlantic, EURO VO Retreats continue to appeal to voice actors who prefer depth over scale. These events intentionally keep attendance smaller, leaning into a retreat model that prioritizes coaching, craft, and meaningful peer connection. The retreats offer a more personalized alternative to the traditional conference experience. They’re less about the expo floor and more about the work itself.

Later in the year, the One Voice Conference USA returns to Dallas August 20–23, continuing its steady expansion as a global community builder. One Voice has always done a good job of balancing education with connection, and its hybrid approach helps bring international voices into the conversation. The One Voice Awards remain a draw and have set new standards for integrity, but the real value tends to be in the cross-pollination of talent from different markets and experience levels. It’s one of the few events that consistently feels both large in reach and personal in tone.

What stands out most about the 2026 conference lineup is how clearly the industry has matured. A decade ago, the question was often which single event to attend. Now the better question is which environment best supports your next step. Some seasons call for the big-room energy of VO Atlanta. Others might benefit more from the focused business lens of VOcation, the community feel of Get Outta Your Booth, the intimacy of the EURO VO Retreats, or the global perspective that One Voice brings.

There isn’t a single right answer ……..and that’s actually a healthy sign for the industry. The options are there. The growth paths are varied. And for voice actors willing to step out from behind the mic and into the room, 2026 is shaping up to offer plenty of opportunity to do exactly that.

In 1942, after the Battle of El Alamein, Winston Churchill famously declared that a turning point in WW2 had been reached, and that while it was not necessarily the “beginning of the end,” it was, perhaps, “the end of the beginning.”

Indeed, that speech and the events surrounding and subsequent to it did in fact turn out to be the beginning of the end of the Axis war machine, and victory became more certain with each passing day.

The fight between voice actors and AI voices, if there ever truly was one, seems to have turned a corner at a similar period in the calendar, during one of the coldest January’s on record in the United States. And while our battle has been mostly against our own fear, (now Roosevelt echoes in my mind,) the era of fear of conquest by robotic impostors may be passing into the frozen night.

Across the industry, talent, agents, managers, casting directors and other players are reporting one of the strongest starts to a year in memory. It feels like 2018 again, with work exploding from the first Monday of the year, defying the traditional pattern of a slow ramp-up and strong second half of the month. More union jobs than in recent memory, more agency work in general, more walk-ins, more old clients reaching out after absences, more direct marketing hits, more volume on P2P’s which had been in decline, and, ironically enough, more “We found you on Chat GPT.” Every iron in every fire has been glowing red for a solid month now, and it shows no sign of slowing down. In fact, one of the most amusing phenomena has been the proliferation of jobs for AI products looking for human voices.

Something has changed. A shift has occurred. And it feels more than ephemeral.

Have buyers finally started to heed the drumbeat of rejection of AI creative? Have they begun to learn that an authenticity-driven under-40 consumer market has no desire for imitation anything? And that AI art has become the Temu slop of shame?

We aren’t luddites. Where AI creates ease in our lives we will embrace it. It makes cute if sloppy media that older audiences seem to dig. Maybe someday it will perform surgery better than humans can. That’s a societal good. But society is learning to take the positive and reject the negative. When the extent of its surveillance state uses are fully exposed it will become more of a pariah than ever. The human race is too independent, ornery, and disorderly to accept the numb compliance that AI developers dream of. It will have its place. It may upend professions. But we will never accept it as art.

And numbers don’t lie.

Late last year I told Anna that 2026 felt like a make or break year for voiceover.

I think we’re gonna make it after all.

It’s that time again!

That’s right…..my yearly ponderings and prognostications about the future of both the voiceover industry and…drumbeat….THE WORLD! Mwahahahaha!

We’ll dive into my crystal ball in just a moment, but first, let’s review 2025’s predictions to see just how badly you’ll be wasting your time reading the rest of this.

 

GOT IT RIGHT/PRETTY CLOSE

This feels right down the middle, especially the last couple of points: ” Work volume grew in 2024 and we’ll continue to see that in 2025, with the interesting added dimension of a return to parity among demographic groups. The pivot to more assertive reads that I suggested in my previous blog looks like it has staying power, and in 2025 I don’t think we’ll see the same, “this type of voice is hot,” vibe that we’ve experienced over the past decade. I believe the market will settle into a place where everybody who has chops has action, and you’ll see some surprising casting choices with unexpected sounds on unexpected brands.”

2025 was the most open and egalitarian year I can recall in VO, where casting often came down to who just put a little more of their spirit into the read and brought the performance to life in unexpected ways. No voice was the “it” voice, and the pendulum swung hard towards “best actor wins,” with few other considerations. Everybody was in play, and man were there in fact some truly wild casting choices.

Oooh…the “world” predictions…..I’ll take a Kreskin trophy on the majority of these. While Trump’s attempts to reduce government spending and bureaucracy instead turned into an absolute shi*show of open corruption and amateurism, and the world hardly feels more stable, we’re close to a deal no one will love on Ukraine, and a tenuous peace holds in Gaza, though achieved differently than predicted. The attack on Iran came true, and while the regime still reigns, its time is short.

Sadly, this couldn’t have been more accurate, “On the other hand, Trump’s immigration crackdown will produce horrifying visuals, and scandals will quickly emerge over the enrichment of private detention companies and their abuse of deportees.”

The stock market hasn’t crashed yet, but I sure wouldn’t count on that lasting, and unemployment is certainly growing rapidly.

The Democrats taking back the mantel of populism and the lack of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan were both on the money.

This feels spot on: “The talent who have been hearing, “we have too many of you,” from agents over the past few years will hear that less in 2025, as long as their skill set and package for representation is impeccable, as the previously predicted market equilibrium grows. On the other hand, the 25-35 demographic might start hearing that more than they have in the past, as agents have been collecting youth for awhile now and are reaching a saturation point. The pendulum always swings.”

This feels closer: “While some will dispute the findings, scientists will reveal convincing evidence of the existence (past or present) of an alien civilization in 2025.”

Also taking a win on this one: “You’ll hear Southern voices/accents in very unexpected placements. Write it down.”

 

BLEW IT/WTF WERE YOU THINKING?

On the other hand, I don’t think anyone feels 2025 was a “banner year for voiceover.” While many established talent still saw growth, and the number of rather rapid new talent success stories seemed higher than usual, the great middle of the industry took it on the chin a bit, primarily as a result of pressure on mid-tier buyer budgets due to a fast-changing and unpredictable media landscape that had many corporations in bootstrap mode. AI erosion gets lots of hype, but there’s scant evidence of much AI VO content where human talent were once used, as opposed to a more general hesitancy to spend on creative in any context for mid-tier projects. So I’ll take a fail on this part of the prediction.

Oh those Super Bowl picks….every year, LOL. Instead of the “rematch America wants,” between the Lions & Bills, we got the rematch nobody wanted between the Chiefs and Eagles, with prime seats dropping as low as $4K, roughly a fifth of their normal price as no one really wanted to go. Though the throttling of the Chiefs was a catharsis for many, even if it made for a sleepy game. Not even close on my bonus NFC Championship Game pick, but on the bright side I actually got to attend the real one, watching my football ex-girlfriend the Commanders get slaughtered in Philly, and getting clowned in real time in the 4th quarter by stadium announcer Bill Larson.

Commercial work grew as predicted in 2025, but was hardly a flood, and advertisers still seem utterly confused about how to target spend, so I’ll take a fail on this one too.

Not sad about no bird flu, but the season is hardly over and the unexpected H3N2 strain is a nasty one. But, let’s take a happy “I was wrong” here.

Another happy “I was wrong…..” no big agency mergers in 2025. Indeed, the bigger agents were more active, visible, and competitive over talent than in recent memory. A happy swing and a miss on that one!

 

OKAY, LET’S LOOK AHEAD TO 2026!

 

INDUSTRY: I expect 2026 to be a turning point in the fight against AI creative in general, not just in VO. The blowback against artificial intelligence in any form of art or advertising is not some Luddite fever dream or wishful thinking. Large majorities of consumers see AI creative as slop, and another symptom of the enshittification of so many things, right up there with fast food restaurants asking for tips, thousand dollar conference tickets, resort fees on your hotel bill, and airlines charging you for everything but emergency oxygen. Moreover, while AI voice is probably a little bit better than a lot of other AI creative, it is all still just not fit for purpose, and barely achieving “good enough.”

Two things will determine whether AI seriously erodes voiceover work going forward: 1.) Will the drumbeat of consumer resistance continue to increase to a critical mass? 2.) When will the AI stock valuation bubble burst?

I suspect the answer to #1 is yes. The AI oligarchy made two critical mistakes…..assuming this generation of young people, who value authenticity over all else, would be enamored with the technology, (grandma likes it….the kids, not so much,) and the absolutely grotesque force-feeding of it down the throats of consumers in every possible context in order to justify unjustifiable investments. Those two critical errors will likely cause something verging on a rebellion against AI in any context other than that which genuinely will improve society. As to the stock market bubble, very simply, the math doesn’t math. Few if any AI companies are profitable, they operate on hated SAAS models, (did you know that most halfway decent AI voiceover services cost $1K+/year for access to any professional-grade features?,) and the vast majority of AI-centric companies are operating on funds borrowed from chip makers like NVIDIA in a ponzi-style scheme that has echoes of the 2008 housing bubble and the dotcom bubble all rolled into one. A major correction is inevitable. A massive collapse is possible. And what will be left is a population embittered by all of the items above AS WELL AS the ruins of their 401k’s, all stuck with only a few viable services left who will be charging more than ever for their wares based on their market dominance and need to recover enormous losses. While organizations like NAVA and SAG-AFTRA continue to fight on behalf of VOs, in the end, the market will have a greater say over the AI endgame than legislation, and I believe the judgement of the market will be harsher than any lawmaker.

 

WORLD: Mark this down as possibly the most important prediction I’ve ever made: Luigi Mangione will go free.

The chances of a Manhattan jury convicting Mangione, regardless of his self-evident guilt, are zero. You WILL NOT find twelve people in Manhattan to populate a jury without one or more intent on making a political statement by voting to acquit. He will either be acquitted in his first trial, or will wind up with a hung jury, be retried, and the result will be the same. After two bites at the apple, there are few judges who would allow a third trial. Any secondary prosecutions will end the same way, and attempts to prosecute him over and over may lead to unrest. It may take a year or three, but he will walk, and when he does America will face a reckoning like it never has before, because in defiance of the law, yet through the legal process, the people will have declared open season on C-Suite figures whose obscene wealth and corruption have destroyed the middle class. It will be, in essence, the first shot in a new American Revolution…..not against political parties or ideologies, but against the nascent oligarchy rising in the United States. Terrified executives and a government that has seen its prosecutorial power neutered by runaway juries will have to decide between massive concessions to rebuild the middle class and offer the average American more security, or severe repression, and the possible backlash thereto. Mark my words….when Mangione goes free, American society will change massively.

 

INDUSTRY: It may seem cliche, but more so than ever in 2026 the talent who do the work will rise. The market is less saturated than it was a year or two ago, but with buyers becoming pickier than ever, and looking for that “special something,” even that which has been tried and true money for years for many VO’s might not be enough in 2026. Your reads will have to be consistently inspired, not just good, and your mix of work sources and hustle among each will have to be more diverse and intense than ever. For quite awhile there has been a cadre of “solid but unspectacular” talent who have been able to make a steady living across multiple genres. That’s not gonna fly in ’26. Actual work volume will continue to grow. Media is ever-growing and the constancy of growth in VO work will always follow, (according to Google…..” The professional voiceover and voice acting industry is a multi-billion dollar market, driven by massive demand from advertising, e-learning, audiobooks (a $4.1B industry), podcasts, and corporate narration, with global revenue estimated in the billions and growing, offering significant earning potential for skilled actors.”) But that “skilled actors” part is the rub. With AI an option, even if its use is overstated, only two types of voice actors will thrive in 2026….the great, and the exceptional. Get your skills in order. Don’t skimp on training. And always be leveling-up, because there are fewer of us than a few years ago, but there are more of the great and the exceptional than ever.

 

WORLD: Okay, let’s do that Super Bowl pick. The Patriots have always been my #2 team, through my years as a Washington fan and still after my conversion to the sadness of Bengals-ism. (I’m a glutton for punishment.) I’d love to see them land a seventh Lombardi, and a first in the post-Brady era. But in a year where Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, and Patrick Mahomes will watch the playoffs from their couches, I think greatness prevails and the Bills go on a tear in the AFC playoffs to punch their ticket to the big dance. The NFC is as wide-open as it has ever been, with every team save for the AFC South champion almost evenly matched skill-wise. I’ll ride with experience, and similar to last year’s Chiefs, after sleepwalking through the regular season I think the Eagles turn it on in the playoffs and get a date with Buffalo in California. That, however, is as far as their luck will carry them, with the Bills defeating the Eagles in Super Bowl LX by a comfortable two-touchdown margin, with Josh Allen finally raising the Lombardi Trophy and garnering Super Bowl MVP honors.

 

Some Quick Hitters:

INDUSTRY: It will be another good year for hungry talent looking for quality representation, but just as in 2025, most success stories will come from making impressions in settings where you can show off your skills. More than ever, agents want to get a sense of who you are as a person as much as who you are as a talent. One thing that has stuck with me over the past year is how often I’ve asked an agent, “Why this person and not that one,” and when all else is equal, (or even close,) the answer I so frequently get is, “I think they’ll work hard for us.” Your demo will show your skill, but your vibe matters too.

 

WORLD: No, seriously, securities are gonna get creamed in 2026, (this blog is my opinion only and not investment advice.)

 

INDUSTRY: Further to the above, if you’re playing footsie with the industry and deciding whether to jump in, do it sooner rather than later. When the economy gets slammed, newcomers flood the VO market. The pandemic was an extreme example, but if there is a 2008 or worse-level recession/major unemployment, it’ll be noob-city once again. Getting traction between 2020-2022 was brutally hard for new talent because of the sheer volume of entry-level competition. If you’re considering getting into the business, there’s a good chance the first half of 2026 will be a better time than the second half.

 

WORLD: 60/40 chance the Republican Party pushes Donald Trump out of the Oval Office before this time next year, whether it’s a Vance-led MAGA putsch, or the return of the moderates working with Democrats to install a non-MAGA President after some precipitating event. Also, the Gavin Newsom boom starts to fade by the end of 2026, with more “real” feeling Democrats like Pete Buttigieg and AOC taking the leading position among the moderate and populist wings of the party, respectively. And, if the Trump administration actually prosecutes Mark Kelly, he’ll be leading all the polls by the end of the year.

 

INDUSTRY: Hot genres for 2026: Commercial (always), Gaming, Corporate Narration (always growing), Political (here we go again,) Audiobooks (always growing,) and an honorable mention for an E-Learning resurgence.

 

WORLD: 2026 will be a year of instability, but the world avoids a cataclysmic event, and the Ukraine war will end with an ugly peace, Taiwan will remain free, and we’ll all be back here next year to laugh at this blog once again!

 

Happy New Year, everyone! May you find prosperity and success in 2026!