D2L Fusion 2026 Recap: What's New, What's Next

What we took away from D2L Fusion 2026

D2L Fusion 2026 wrapped up in Phoenix last week, and it was one of the strongest editions of the conference we have attended. Three days of programming across teaching, learning, technology, and partnership tracks, an opening keynote from John Baker setting the tone for where the Brightspace ecosystem is heading, and a genuinely full agenda of institutional case studies from Brightspace users pushing the boundaries of what the LMS can do.

For our team, Fusion 2026 was also personal. We're closing this recap with something we did not expect going in, and we want to share it properly.

Here's what we took away from the conference this year, what the D2L product announcements mean for institutions running Brightspace, and what to keep an eye on for 2027.

What you can't miss from Fusion 2026

If you couldn't be in Phoenix, a few themes ran across the conference that are worth flagging for any Brightspace institution planning the next academic year.

Trust by Design continues to be a defining conversation. D2L introduced Trust by Design 2.0 as a continuing framework for how AI is deployed responsibly inside institutional workflows, and it was threaded across sessions rather than isolated to a single track. Governance, transparency, and human oversight are no longer optional dimensions of an AI strategy. They are the strategy.

Partnership was a bigger part of the conversation than in previous years. D2L Fusion 2026 leaned into the message that their next chapter is shaped as much by its partner ecosystem as by its own product roadmap, and the sessions reflected that. Institutional case studies where the deployment involved D2L working alongside partners (including our own session with The American College of Financial Services) were among the highest-attended breakouts on the agenda.

AI has moved from experimental to operational. The institutions presenting at Fusion this year were not describing pilots. They were describing production deployments, scaled programs, and the operational lessons from running AI across faculties. That maturity shift is the story of Fusion 2026.

The big D2L announcements and what they mean for institutions

D2L announced a substantial set of releases at Fusion 2026, spanning both the core Brightspace platform and the Lumi AI experience. Here are the ones worth understanding as you plan for the next academic year.

D2L Lumi Updates at D2L Fusion 2026

Two new Lumi releases stood out:

• Lumi Learner Mode brings AI-powered learning support directly into the native Brightspace experience. Students engage with AI guidance inside the exact course they are enrolled in, without needing to leave the LMS or navigate to a separate portal. This is a direct extension of the embedded-AI principle we have been advocating for since day one: support that lives where the learning is already happening.
• Lumi Remix allows institutions and educators to adapt existing learning content for different audiences, formats, and languages in minutes. For institutions serving multilingual or multi-modal learner populations, this is a meaningful step in reducing the manual overhead of content adaptation.

For institutions already using AI Student Tutor or evaluating tutoring solutions, the Lumi Learner Mode announcement is worth paying close attention to as an extension of the D2L and LearnWise partnership.

What has changed in the D2L Brightspace platform?

D2L released a wide set of Brightspace platform updates including:

• Advanced Group Assignments and Enhanced Group Management for institutions running large or complex group work
• Learner Quiz Tools with new bookmarking and strike-through capabilities that support learners during assessment
• Collapsible Table of Contents and Sequential Learning Visibility to help learners navigate courses with less friction
• Distributed Administration giving sub-organization administrators more control while maintaining centralized governance
• Compliance Management Suite for institutions automating recurring compliance training
• People Dashboard delivering real-time visibility into learning progress and compliance risks
• Enhanced My Courses Experience with new views, filters, and sorting

Taken together, this release cycle continues the direction D2L has been signaling: a platform that gives institutions more granular control, a better learner experience, and cleaner administrative workflows without adding operational overhead.

What content and creator tools are available in D2L Brightspace?

Two related product areas also saw significant updates worth mentioning:

• Createspace received new capabilities for centralized content management, content syncing, version control, course copy, and skills mapping, giving institutions a stronger foundation for reusable learning content at scale.
• Creator+ and H5P received updates covering Smart Import expansions, a cleaner interface aligned to Brightspace, improved mobile usability, custom branding, WCAG 2.2 A and AA accessibility enhancements, and Enhanced Practice Activities.

For institutions that operate at scale, the underlying pattern is consistent: more content reusability, more governance, more accessibility. All of which sits well alongside the AI Campus Support and AI Feedback & Grader capabilities that already integrate with Brightspace.

If you want to explore the full picture, D2L's Product Release 2026 H2 covers everything shipping in the second half of the year.

LearnWise is theD2L Partner of the Year

We're proud to share that LearnWise AI was named D2L Partner of the Year at Fusion 2026! The award is a reflection of the trust our partner institutions have in us, the depth of the relationship we've built with the D2L team, and the past years of work at LearnWise to make AI in higher education a trusted, scalable solution for institutions looking to improve the student experience.

Looking ahead to D2L Fusion 2027

D2L Fusion 2027 will be held in Denver, Colorado.

The theme for next year’s edition is "learning at elevation," and the program is being designed to build on this year's Trust by Design focus while expanding the partner and case study tracks that made Fusion 2026 a great conference. If you are running Brightspace and thinking through your 2027 planning cycle, adding Fusion to the calendar now is worth doing early.

Between now and then, if you want a broader perspective on where the sector is heading, our 2026 State of AI-Powered Teaching & Learning Report is a good place to start. It draws on more than 191,283 aggregated and anonymized student-AI conversations across 56 of our 150+ global partner institutions, and it uncovers how AI has moved firmly from front-office administration straight into the classroom. It's the fullest picture we currently have of what's happening across higher education AI tutoring and feedback solutions right now, and a useful companion for anyone thinking through their institution's next planning cycle. Download the report here.

We will be at Fusion 2027, and we are already thinking about what we want to bring to the stage in Denver. Between now and then, the D2L and LearnWise partnership continues to deepen, and there is more to come as Lumi Learner Mode, Lumi Remix, and the broader Trust by Design 2.0 conversation continue to shape what responsible AI in higher education looks like in practice.

If you would like to talk through what any of this means for your institution's Brightspace strategy, request a walkthrough. And if you were in Phoenix, thank you for the conversations and the coffee. See you in Denver next year!