Trending Skills, Topics, Certifications and More – September 2026

Looking to stay ahead of the curve? When it comes to professional skills, certifications, tools, and technologies, Udemy is the first to know what’s trending. Check out these trends from September 2026.

The course-specific data in this article is limited to courses in English. All other data is global data (location-and-language-agnostic).

What are people searching for?

These queries saw the largest % month-over-month growth on Udemy (queries must meet minimum search volume threshold to qualify).

1. “claude certified architect foundations“ – Searches for this query grew by +27,785 month-over-month. “claude certified architect foundations” is a certification, which relates to Claude AI. This certification from Anthropic validates the ability to design solutions with Claude. 
2. “aws certified ai business strategist“ – Searches for this query grew by +2,796 month-over-month. “aws certified ai business strategist” is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) certification (exam code AIB-C01) for business professionals who plan and lead AI adoption. Rising interest in this certification is likely due to AWS adding it to its certification lineup in September 2026^[1].
3. “sc-500“ – Searches for this query grew by +2,502 month-over-month. “sc-500” is a certification, which relates to Microsoft AZ-500. SC-500 is the exam for Microsoft’s Cloud and AI Security Engineer Associate certification, which validates security controls across cloud and AI workloads^[2]. Interest in this certification is likely rising due to Microsoft retiring the AZ-500 exam on August 31, 2026^[3], making SC-500 its replacement.
4. “fde“ – Searches for this query grew by +2,284 month-over-month. An “fde” is a Forward Deployed Engineer, which is a role embedded with a customer to build and deploy software or AI inside that customer’s own systems. Interest in this technical skill may be on the rise due to OpenAI launching the OpenAI Deployment Company in May 2026 to embed Forward Deployed Engineers in organizations^[4].
5. “ccna“ – Searches for this query grew by +2,073 month-over-month. “ccna” is a certification, which relates to Cisco CCNA. The CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) is Cisco’s associate-level networking certification, earned by passing one exam (200-301). Interest in this certification may be on the rise due to Cisco setting a cutover to a new CCNA v2.0 exam. The last day to test on the current version is February 2, 2027, and the new version starts February 3, 2027^[5].

What are people learning about?

These topics saw the largest % month-over-month growth in demand (must meet demand minimum thresholds to qualify).

1. IT & Software trend: “ServiceNow Certified Implementation Specialist – Data Foundations (CMDB and CSDM) (CIS-DF).” – Demand for this topic grew by 50.99% month-over-month.  This is a ServiceNow certification, which proves someone can keep the CMDB, a company’s master record of its IT assets and how they connect, clean and organized. Learners are focusing on keeping configuration management database (CMDB) data healthy, preventing duplicate records, automating data upkeep, and practicing for the exam.
2. AI trend: “OpenAI Codex.” – Demand for this topic grew by 38.43% month-over-month. Learners are focusing on building apps, websites, and games with Codex AI agents, extending Codex with skills, plugins, and connections to tools like Gmail and Canva, running teams of subagents, and automating reports, dashboards, and presentations.
3. Sales trend: “Sales Skills.” – Demand for this topic grew by 23.75% month-over-month. Learners are focusing on consultative selling, buyer psychology, discovery questions, handling objections, closing deals, qualifying opportunities with the MEDDICC framework, and practicing with AI roleplay bots. Interest in Sales Skills may be growing due to early-career sellers looking for more practice, which self-paced courses with AI roleplay can provide. Salesforce’s State of Sales report found 47% of Gen Z sellers say they don’t get enough roleplay practice before customer calls^[6].
4. AI & Business trend: “AI Ethics and Governance.” – Demand for this topic grew by 23.38% month-over-month. AI governance is the set of rules, roles, and checks an organization puts in place to keep its AI safe, fair, and compliant with laws. Learners are focusing on what responsible AI means, building governance frameworks, sorting AI systems into EU AI Act risk tiers, applying ISO/IEC 42001 and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) AI Risk Management Framework, running risk assessments, writing policies like model cards and acceptable-use rules, and defending AI apps against attacks like prompt injection.
5. Business trend: “Real Estate Investing.” – Demand for this topic grew by 14.58% month-over-month. Learners are focusing on spotting good investments across rentals, fix-and-flips, commercial, and Airbnb properties, building cash-flow and financial models in Excel, comparing mortgages, and walking through the home-buying process.

Instructors that are growing in popularity:

These instructors saw the largest % month-over-month growth in enrollments (must meet minimum enrollment thresholds to qualify).

1. Carlos Oliveira (4.6/5 rating) teaches AI Agents & Agentic AI – Enrollments grew by 124.75% month-over-month. Carlos’s fastest-growing course is AI Architect: Enterprise AI System Design, which teaches learners to design retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and AI agent systems that handle failures, stay compliant, control costs, and scale in production.
2. Tom Phillips (4.5/5 rating) teaches GitHub Copilot – Enrollments grew by 98.43% month-over-month. Tom’s fastest-growing course is GitHub Copilot Beginner to Pro – AI for Coding & Development, which teaches learners to code faster with Copilot’s Plan, Agent, and Ask modes, custom agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP) connections, and the Copilot CLI.
3. Elizabeth Evans (4.6/5 rating) teaches CIPS Level 4 Diploma in Procurement and Supply – Enrollments grew by 50.34% month-over-month. Elizabeth Evans’s fastest-growing course is CIPS L4M4 Ethical & Responsible Sourcing- Practice Questions, which teaches learners to sharpen their exam skills with realistic, exam-style questions laid out like the real Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS) exam, covering every question type, plus timed practice, answer explanations, tips for spotting the right answer from clues in the question, and pointers back to the CIPS study guide for weaker areas.

Fastest growing courses on Udemy:

These courses saw the largest % growth in enrollments month-over-month (must meet minimum enrollment thresholds to qualify).

1. Intro to AI Agents and Agentic AI relates to Artificial Intelligence (AI)– Enrollments grew by 91.18% month-over-month. In this course, students are learning what AI agents are, how they work, and how to build agents that boost productivity.
2. Claude Certified Developer – Foundations (CCDV-F)-Exam Prep relates to IT Certifications– Enrollments grew by 86.13% month-over-month. In this course, students are learning to build Claude agents and workflows, test and debug them, and choose the right model for the job.
3. AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer Associate: Hands On! relates to AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer – Associate– Enrollments grew by 11.11% month-over-month. In this course, students are learning to train, deploy, and monitor machine learning models on AWS while prepping for the MLA-C02 exam.

I’m feelin’ lucky…

Feeling adventurous? Here’s a random pick from outside the AI spotlight: Guitar Chords Mastery – Gain Total Fretboard Chord Access (4.7/5 rating). It’s for beginner-to-intermediate guitarists stuck on the first few frets or bar chords who want to play chords anywhere on the fretboard, with lessons on chord-building theory, memorizing fretboard notes, the CAGED system, triads, and the Nashville number system. Sometimes a happy accident turns into a favorite new skill.

Your path to guitar chord mastery

Guitar Chords Mastery – Gain Total Fretboard Chord Access

Mark Shian

Bestseller 4.7 366 ratings

This article is focused on surfacing new, emerging learning trends. For more of a focus on overall popularity, view our popular and trending topics page.

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