CIOs carry three numbers into the next budget

24.09.2026

5 min read

For 2026, the SAP user group DSAG finds that only 38 percent of member companies have a rising total IT budget, after 43 percent in 2024. Anyone who enters the October talks without their own priority ranking leaves prioritization to finance.

Key takeaways

DSAG finds that 38 percent of members have a rising IT budget. 24 percent cut it, 35 percent hold it steady.
More than half of cloud users expect rising operating costs. Bitkom (Germany’s digital association) cites 54 percent for 2026.
Security’s share of the IT budget is 18 percent. In 2022 it was 9 percent, and the block stays mandatory.
Robin Kaufmann wants clear priorities in a tight budget. Defend every line item and finance chooses what gets sacrificed.

Only 38 percent raise the IT budget

Three figures belong in the budget talk: the spread of total budgets, the cloud cost trend and the mandatory share for security. The 2026 Investment Report of the German-speaking SAP user group DSAG describes no uniform move upward. The direction at each company counts for more than an average across all industries.

38 percent of the companies surveyed are raising the total IT budget. 24 percent are cutting it.

35 percent are holding the budget flat. That standstill is more common than the cut. Growth remains the largest group, and it stays short of a majority.

In 2024, rising budgets still stood at 43 percent and falling ones at 18 percent. The spread has shifted since: less growth, more cuts. A CIO who enters the talk with the line “IT grows too” speaks for a minority.

Metric	Prior	Current
Rising total IT budgets (DSAG)	43 percent (2024)	38 percent (2026)
Falling total IT budgets (DSAG)	18 percent (2024)	24 percent (2026)
Cloud operating costs rising (Bitkom)	64 percent in the prior year	54 percent expect this in 2026
IT security share of the IT budget (Bitkom Research)	9 percent (2022)	18 percent (2025)

Source: DSAG Investment Report 2026, Bitkom Cloud Report of 17 June 2026 and Bitkom Research of 7 October 2025. The rows come from different samples.

The press release from Walldorf of 26 February 2026 is based on 198 people from user companies. Those surveyed were CIOs, heads of IT and comparable contacts, one voice per member company, from 8 December 2025 to 21 January 2026. Most of the companies are headquartered in Germany.

Anyone who justifies their own line only with growth meets counterparts who are already cutting internally. The spread is the first number that belongs in the talk. It explains why neighboring departments read the same request more strictly than two years earlier.

Cloud costs rise ahead of new projects

The Bitkom Cloud Report 2026 supplies the second number. It covers costs already booked before a new project appears in the request. Without this number, every added license looks like growth, though it often only keeps operations running.

At 64 percent of companies that use the cloud, operating costs rose in the prior year. For 2026, 54 percent expect costs to keep rising. The press release of 17 June 2026 in Berlin limits the cost question to cloud users.

35 percent expect cloud operating costs to stay unchanged, 9 percent expect them to fall. The majority is not planning on cheaper operations.

A CIO who presents the cloud as relief needs in-house evidence for that. The industry figure does not support this story. Finance poses the counter-question: what share of the requested sum only covers ongoing operations?

24 percent cut the total IT budget

The share making cuts sits above the 18 percent of 2024.

DSAG Investment Report 2026, press release 26 February 2026

Security doubles the mandatory share

Bitkom Research puts IT security’s share of the total IT budget for 2025 at 18 percent. In 2022 it stood at 9 percent. In three years the mandatory block has doubled.

The release of 7 October 2025 bases the share question on 1,002 companies in Germany. The firms surveyed have at least ten employees and at least one million euros in annual revenue. The sample covers the German market beyond SAP users.

The analyst firm PAC sizes the German IT security market at about 11 billion euros in 2025. For 2026, PAC cites about 12 billion euros. That is market context. The figure says nothing about the share in a company budget.

Security is the block finance finds hardest to treat as an optional extra without exposing the risk. Anyone who hides the share later has to explain the same sum as a surprise. What remains after cloud operations and the security share funds innovation, projects and AI.

Kaufmann demands prioritization in a tight budget

Robin Kaufmann, managing director of VOICE, the Federal Association of IT Users, said on 27 January 2026: “Companies must get by on ever tighter IT budgets, while the demands on security and innovation keep growing. Companies must prioritize clearly now. IT security is not negotiable, and anyone who hesitates on AI loses competitiveness.”

The accompanying IT Agenda 2026 from Metrics and VOICE expects budget growth of 0.12 percent for 2026, the lowest figure since the survey began in 2014. 268 people from the German-speaking region responded in October and November 2025. Kaufmann speaks as an association spokesperson.

The 0.12 percent from VOICE and the 38 percent from DSAG do not measure the same thing. VOICE asks for the expected average increase, DSAG for the direction at each company. The VOICE average gives no reason to expect a large jump in the total budget.

On 12 June 2026, IT-BUSINESS reported on the 2026 Lünendonk study of the IT services market in Germany. 55 percent of the CIOs surveyed expect rising budgets at a low level from 2026 to 2027. That is an expectation. DSAG, by contrast, measures the direction at each company for 2026.

No cut list from a company CIO is public. The priority ranking stays internal.

The Bitkom figure of 7 July 2026 concerns the vendor market: plus 4.1 percent, to about 246 billion euros for IT and telecommunications in 2026. That is industry revenue. The CIO budget follows the spread among users.

“Companies must prioritize clearly now. IT security is not negotiable.”

Robin Kaufmann, managing director of VOICE

Sacrifice no line item and you hand over the priority order

The CIO needs the three numbers together, because none of them settles the talk alone. The spread shows that growth is no longer an automatic premise. Cloud costs show why new projects run up against rising operating costs. The security share shows which block takes the heaviest toll if it is treated as an optional extra.

What is missing is an internal priority ranking. The associations supply benchmarks. They supply no priority list for the company itself. A reliable overall forecast for CIO budgets in 2027 does not exist yet.

The negotiation therefore turns on a simple point. Anyone who only reads out the three numbers supplies material. Anyone who also says which of their own items will give way leads the talk. Finance fills the gap as soon as IT leaves it open.

What is the mandatory block in the IT budget? The share that cannot be treated as an optional extra in the negotiation, because otherwise the risk is exposed. Bitkom Research puts it at 18 percent for IT security, after 9 percent in 2022.

Frequently asked questions

Will IT budgets rise across the board in 2027?

A reliable overall forecast for CIO budgets in 2027 does not exist yet. Lünendonk reports increases at a low level for 2026 to 2027.

Which cloud figure belongs in the negotiation?

Bitkom finds that 54 percent of cloud users expect operating costs to keep rising in 2026. In the prior year, costs rose for 64 percent of cloud users.

Why does security remain the mandatory block?

Bitkom Research reports that security accounts for 18 percent of the IT budget, up from 9 percent in 2022. Kaufmann calls security non-negotiable.