CDP 2026 reporting season has officially begun!
The 2026 CDP questionnaire and scoring methodology have been released, the response window opened in June, and the deadline for scored submissions is 15 September 2026. Whether you're a returning or first-time discloser, understanding the latest changes, scoring updates, and preparation requirements is essential to improving your CDP score and submitting a high-quality response.
This article explores the key changes introduced in CDP 2026:
- Explains how the updated scoring methodology could affect your results,
- Provide a practical preparation checklist,
- Outline best practices to help organisations to submit a high-quality, high-scoring CDP response.
CDP disclosure 2026 is a strategic imperative
CDP has evolved into a strategic business tool, helping organizations convert environmental data into actionable insights, strengthen resilience, and meet increasing market expectations. In 2025, 640 investors representing US$127 trillion in assets and 270+ major buyers requested environmental disclosures from companies and suppliers through CDP.
With 23,100+ organizations disclosing environmental information and 800+ companies achieving A list recognition, CDP continues to be a key benchmark for environmental leadership, risk management, and transparent decision-making.
Momentum for environmental transparency continues to grow in 2026 as markets demand reliable, actionable data.
CDP 2026 briefly: What's new this year?
The CDP 2026 disclosure cycle introduces important updates designed to improve data quality, strengthen alignment with global sustainability frameworks, and help organizations move from disclosure toward measurable environmental action.
Key changes in corporate questionnaires
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New topic - ocean disclosure
CDP 2026 expands its environmental disclosure framework to include the ocean, addressing a critical area that has historically been underreported despite growing market demand for reliable data. In 2026, organizations responding to CDP's full corporate questionnaire can opt in to ocean disclosure, with greater encouragement for sectors with significant ocean-related impacts, such as fishing and aquaculture, shipping, and offshore energy.
The new ocean-related questions will follow CDP's existing disclosure approach, helping organizations build a more integrated understanding of environmental impacts across climate, nature, water, and marine ecosystems.
Importantly, ocean disclosure will be unscored in 2026, giving organizations time to establish data collection processes, strengthen governance, and prepare for future expectations around ocean-related transparency.
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Expanding focus on forests and natural ecosystems
CDP continues to expand its focus beyond forests to address broader land-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities across commodity supply chains. CDP has expanded commodity coverage by introducing scoring for cocoa, coffee, and rubber, in addition to existing high-impact commodities such as cattle, palm oil, soy, and timber.
Scoring will be standardized across all seven key commodities, enabling a more complete assessment of how organizations identify, manage, and address deforestation and ecosystem risks within their supply chains. CDP has also refined the essential criteria applied for the commodity disclosures. CDP will provide commodity sub-scores this will now include sub-scores for cocoa, coffee, and rubber, in addition to the other four commodities.
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Strengthening water security disclosure
CDP 2026 enhances water security disclosure to improve transparency around how organizations assess water-related risks, reduce impacts, and manage freshwater resources sustainably. CDP introduced new reporting requirements on wastewater treatment levels, discharge volumes, and compliance with regulatory requirements. These updates strengthen alignment with the GRI 303: Water and Effluents Standard and provide clearer insight into organizations' wastewater management practices.
Organizations will be able to disclose progress against Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) freshwater methodologies, including whether they have completed the assessment phase and whether freshwater quantity and quality targets have been validated through the Accountability Accelerator.
Water security disclosures will be fully scored in CDP 2026. Scoring will place greater emphasis on compliance with regulations, validated science-based freshwater targets, and effective management of water pollutants, enabling stronger recognition of organizations demonstrating leading water stewardship.
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Scaling plastics disclosure
CDP 2026 expands plastics disclosure to support the transition from a linear plastics model toward a circular economy. Organizations responding to the full corporate questionnaire can opt in to report plastics-related impacts and practices.
New and modified questions improve alignment with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Global Commitment, covering plastics targets, packaging formats, recyclable and compostable design, and reuse models. CDP has placed greater emphasis on transparency. Companies now can disclose their progress on circularity on plastic, reduction targets, packaging strategies, and adoption of reuse solutions.
Plastics disclosures will remain unscored in CDP 2026, allowing organizations time to establish data collection processes and prepare for future expectations.
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Strengthening climate change disclosure
Climate Change is the foundational baseline for all reporting within the CDP it serves as an entry point for corporate transparency, requiring organizations to report fundamental data like GHG emissions inventories and energy use
CDP continues alignment with the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, Organizations are required to begin preparing for future reporting requirements under the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard (LSRS), although quantitative land-sector emissions and removals data and will not be required in 2026.
CDP has refined energy-related reporting to improve consistency with the GHG Protocol and enhance renewable energy data quality. RE100 members will need to provide additional information on renewable electricity sourcing, including time matching, supply agreement duration, and biomass co-firing.
Climate change will remain scored and scoring requirements are adjusted to reflect the transition to new land-sector requirements, with some agriculture-related questions removed from scoring. Energy and renewable energy scoring will also be streamlined and clarified to improve consistency and comparability.
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Strengthening adaptation and resilience disclosure
CDP 2026 increases focus on climate adaptation and resilience, recognizing that physical climate and nature-related risks are creating growing impacts on businesses, communities, and ecosystems.
Alignment with TCFD and TNFD approaches questions across modules 2, 4, 5, 11, 12, and 14 strengthen reporting on adaptation actions and give opportunities to organization to disclose they are addressing adaptation and resilience.
CDP has made minor scoring methodology updates to encourage organizations to disclose concrete actions taken to improve adaptation and resilience. Overall, CDP 2026 reinforces the shift from identifying climate risks to demonstrating proactive measures that build long-term business resilience.
Key Changes in the SME Questionnaire
CDP 2026 introduces key updates to make environmental disclosure more accessible and relevant for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with expanded coverage of nature-related topics, improved climate scoring opportunities, and simplified guidance.
SMEs can now voluntarily disclose dedicated information on forests and water-related impacts through new modules covering commodities, traceability, deforestation-free practices, water accounting, monitoring, and targets. Leading SME's can now achieve an SME A score for climate change, providing greater recognition for organizations demonstrating strong climate action. CDP has introduced simplified guidance and usability by giving clearer language, concept overviews, rationale sections, and example responses to help SMEs better understand and complete disclosures.
SME forests and water security disclosures will not be scored in 2026, allowing CDP to collect data and develop meaningful scoring approaches for future cycles.
Scoring and Essential Criteria Updates for 2026
- CDP 2026 scoring continues to evolve alongside the questionnaire, with a stronger focus on environmental risk management, transparency, and leadership-level action.
- Scoring structure remains consistent organizations responding to the full corporate questionnaire will continue receiving separate scores for Climate Change, Forests, and Water Security. Biodiversity, Plastics, and Ocean disclosures will remain unscored in 2026.
- CDP has made several revisions to its essential criteria to align with the updated questionnaire structure. These baseline requirements ensure a consistent minimum standard for transparency and environmental stewardship across all scoring levels.
| Topic | Key 2026 Update | Scoring Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Climate Change |
|
Scored
|
| Forests |
|
Scored
|
| Water Security |
|
Scored
|
| Ocean |
|
Not scored in 2026
|
| Plastics |
|
Not scored in 2026 |
| Biodiversity |
|
Not scored in 2026 |
| SME Climate Change |
|
|
| SME Forests & Water Security |
|
Not scored in 2026 |
CDP 2026 Preparation Checklist
A successful CDP submission starts with early planning. Use this practical preparation checklist to assess your organization's readiness for CDP 2026, identify gaps early and prioritize actions required to meet the September 15 scored submission deadline or the October 26 unscored submission deadline. By starting early, organizations can improve data quality, strengthen disclosures, and ensure a smoother reporting process.
Understand CDP 2026 requirements: Review the CDP 2026 questionnaires, reporting guidance, and scoring methodology updates. Identify new or revised questions, disclosure expectations, and scoring changes to understand how they may impact your organizations' reporting.
Define your reporting scope: Confirm the applicable CDP questionnaire, reporting boundaries, and entities to be included in the disclosure. Ensure that the reporting scope is aligned with internal reporting practices where applicable.
Collect and validate data: Gather all relevant data including Scope 1-3 GHG emissions, climate-related financial information, and environmental performance metrics, policies and others. Validate data accuracy and consistency before reporting.
Review governance: Evaluate environmental governance structures, including board oversight, management responsibilities, policies, and decision-making processes. Ensure governance disclosures clearly demonstrate how environmental issues are integrated into corporate governance.
Assess risks and opportunities: Review climate- and nature-related risks and opportunities across the value chain, considering time horizons. Ensure that risks are linked to business strategy, financial planning, resilience, and mitigation actions.
Validate targets and transition plans: Review environmental targets, transition plans, and implementation strategies. Confirm that targets are measurable, monitored regularly, and supported by clear action plans.
Gather supporting evidence: Compile supporting documentation such as environmental policies, risk assessments, emissions, calculation methodologies, verification statements, certifications, and internal procedures. Maintaining evidence improves response credibility and supports higher-scoring disclosures.
Draft responses: Prepare draft responses to ensure responses are complete, identify the gaps, and clearly address the intent of each question before proceeding to submission.
Gap Analysis Before Submission
A structured CDP gap assessment evaluates draft responses against the 2026 scoring methodology allows organizations to identify their weak responses, identify missing information, avoid common reporting errors, enables organizations to improve their response quality, and maximize scoring opportunities before final disclosure submission.
- Compare responses against the scoring methodology: Assess each draft response against the CDP 2026 scoring methodology to determine whether all disclosure, awareness, management, and leadership requirements have been adequately addressed.
- Identify missing evidence: Review each response to ensure it is supported by appropriate evidence, including policies, quantitative data, methodologies, and documented processes. Identify any missing information that may affect scoring.
- Review Essential Criteria: Assess all applicable essential criteria have been met, including sector-specific requirements where relevant. Missing Essential Criteria requirements limits organizations from achieving high scores.
- Identify weak-scoring responses: Review each response to identify incomplete narratives, inconsistent data that leads to lower scoring levels. Mark the responses which has an opportunity for improvements.
- Recommend improvements: Analyze the responses and provide recommendations to strengthen disclosures by improving transparency, adding supporting evidence, providing clearer narratives, addressing data gaps, to align with higher-scoring potentials.
- Perform final quality assurance: Conduct a comprehensive final review of the entire submission to verify data consistency across questions also ensure supporting evidence is available. Obtain internal approvals and validate overall quality of the submission readiness before the final CDP submission.
CDP reporting has evolved beyond a compliance exercise into a strategic framework that helps organizations understand their environmental risks, improve decision-making, and drives a long-term business value for organizations around the world. CDP 2026 has an increased demands on data quality, risk management, governance, and measurable environmental action. CDP 2026 has expanded its focus on climate change, forest, water, and supply chains organizations who take a proactive approach are better positioned to succeed.
ecoPRISM Supports CDP Disclosure Preparation
ecoPRISM supports organisations preparing for CDP 2026 with a structured two-step approach. The first step is a gap analysis comparing your 2025 CDP response against the 2026 questionnaire changes to identify exactly where points were lost and what closing those gaps would take. This gives your team a clear, prioritised picture of where to focus before the September deadline.
The second step is hands-on support for improving your responses, working through the specific gaps identified, strengthening evidence, improving narrative quality, and aligning disclosures with CSRD, TCFD, GHG Protocol, and GRI where relevant.
We are currently working with companies across Europe and India on their CDP 2026 submissions. If you want to understand where your response stands before the scoring deadline, we are happy to take a look.
Frequently Asked Questions About CDP 2026
CDP 2026 introduces increased expectations around data quality, governance, risk management, and measurable environmental action. Key updates include new topic ocean disclosures and expanded requirements in climate, forest, water, and supply chain considerations. CDP has revised scoring expectations and refined essential criteria to meet new disclosure requirements. Organizations should review the latest questionnaire and scoring methodology to understand how these changes impact their reporting approach.
Ocean-related disclosures are not mandatory for all organizations. Applicability depends on the organization's activities, sector, and environmental impacts. Companies should review the CDP 2026 questionnaire guidance to determine whether ocean-related questions apply to their operations and opt-in for reporting.
Yes. SMEs can achieve high CDP scores, including an A score, if they demonstrate strong environmental governance, complete and accurate disclosures, effective risk management processes, and measurable environmental actions. CDP has given several updates on SME's scoring methodology and refined the disclosure requirements to better and simplified reporting.
Essential Criteria are key requirements within the CDP scoring methodology that organizations must meet to progress to higher scoring levels. These criteria assess fundamental elements such as governance, risk management, targets, data quality, and implementation practices. Organization that fails to meet applicable Essential Criteria may face limitations to achieve the high or better score.
No. Organizations are required to complete only the modules that applicable to their business activities, sector, and reporting requirements. However, companies should carefully review eligibility criteria and ensure all relevant modules are addressed to avoid missing scoring opportunities.
Organizations can use previous CDP responses as a starting point, but responses should be reviewed and updated to align with CDP 2026 requirements, revised questions, scoring methodology. Analyze changes in organization's performance, targets, governance, and environmental data update disclosures accordingly.
Organizations can improve their CDP scores by preparing early, conducting a structured gap assessment, addressing missing disclosures, improving data quality, strengthening governance and risk management practices, providing supporting evidence, and ensuring clear and complete responses that demonstrate transparency in environmental action and business integration.