List Sends, RCS and Content Variants: Reading the Latest Marketing Cloud Next Release

Release notes are mostly a list of features. The useful read is narrower: which of these removes a workaround I am currently maintaining?

Three from the Summer '26 notes

• List sends to Contact and Lead lists without first building a segment — this removes a real source of delay and occasional failures for simple sends.
• RCS as a supported channel — worth scoping properly rather than assuming it behaves like SMS.
• Content variants, custom web fonts and live Salesforce data in personalisation — brand consistency and multilingual work that previously leaned on custom content blocks.

How I read a release for a client

• Find anything that changes a default. Those are the risks.
• Find anything that replaces custom code we wrote. Those are the savings.
• Find anything in beta and mark it as unplannable until it is not.
• Ignore the rest until someone asks for it.

A caution

Marketing Cloud Next is moving quickly. Anything I write about it has a shelf life, and the release notes for your release are the only authority worth quoting to a client.

Summarised from the Salesforce Summer '26 Marketing Cloud Next release notes at the time of writing. Check the current notes for your release before acting on any of it.