Over the past decade, ticketing platforms have evolved at extraordinary speed.
Modern APIs, mobile wallets, digital identities, smarter checkout layers, improved discovery tools and stronger fraud controls have reshaped how tickets are sold and accessed.
But as the industry moves toward 2026, a new reality is becoming impossible to ignore.
The next wave of transformation won’t be driven by the front end.
It will be driven by the infrastructure beneath everything.
Across markets from the US to LATAM to Europe product leaders inside ticketing companies are asking the same question:
What will the next five years of ticketing actually require?
This analysis is grounded in years of hands-on work inside primary ticketing platforms, close collaboration with product, engineering and operations teams across regions, and the observation of millions of ticket journeys each month through live systems.
What emerges is clear: five structural challenges platforms will be forced to solve next, not because they want to, but because fan behaviour, market expectations and commercial pressure will leave no alternative.
1. From transaction platforms to continuous value platforms
Ticketing systems were built for a world where the job ended at checkout.
That world is gone.
Today, fans expect:
- flexibility
- transparency
- multiple decisions across the lifecycle
- seamless movement between purchase, attendance and resale
- verified experiences at every step
A platform that only optimises the moment of purchase is now missing most of the story.
The next generation of platforms will be defined by their ability to create value before, during and after the sale, not just at the point of conversion.
As Iñaki Sánchez López, CEO of menta tech, puts it:
“A ticket used to be something you issued. In 2026, a ticket is something you manage.”
menta tech is an infrastructure company focused on the post-purchase side of ticketing.
Working directly with primary ticketing platforms across the US, Europe and Latin America, menta provides white-label, API-first infrastructure that allows platforms to manage resale, transfers and post-purchase activity natively under their own brand, rather than outsourcing these flows to external marketplaces.
The company was built by teams with deep experience inside ticketing systems and designed specifically to support complex, multi-touch ticket lifecycles at scale.
This shift, from single-moment systems to multi-moment platforms, will define the next decade of ticketing.
2. The era of hidden complexity is ending
Ticketing appears simple on the surface.Under the hood, it is one of the most complex systems in live entertainment.
Most platforms are dealing with:
- legacy codebases
- custom integrations
- regional regulatory differences
- promoter-specific logic
- venue rules
- fragmented operational flows
- inconsistent payout and tax models
- identity fragmentation
- thousands of edge cases
For years, this complexity remained largely invisible, to fans and often to executives.
But platforms are now realising something critical: complexity itself isn’t the enemy. Hidden complexity is.
When complexity is buried inside the system, it becomes unpredictable, expensive and resistant to innovation.
By 2026, platforms will either start untangling and formalising this complexity or be constrained by it.
3. Every platform will need a liquidity strategy
In the coming years, “inventory” will no longer mean just primary supply.
It will include everything that happens after the initial sale:
- returns
- cancellations
- no-shows
- resale listings
- fragmented demand signals
- last-minute buyers
- reactivation of unused inventory
- peak windows of secondary intent
Today, most platforms lack a true liquidity strategy because they were never designed with one in mind.
Yet liquidity is the backbone of:
- higher conversion
- better yield
- improved discovery
- smoother fan experiences
- predictable, recurring revenue
Platforms that ignore this will increasingly lose fans, revenue and relevance to ecosystems built to manage it.
As Martin Haigh, SVP Sales & Business Development at menta tech, notes:
“Demand isn’t linear anymore.Liquidity is what keeps the whole system breathing.”
4. Data ownership will become the new competitive moat
One of the biggest blind spots in ticketing today lies in the post-purchase journey.
Primary platforms routinely lose visibility into:
- why fans list tickets
- when they decide to resell
- how pricing shifts over time
- who buys late and why
- which events show volatility
- which venues generate more resale activity
- which artists drive early commitment versus late switching
This behavioural data is immensely valuable, yet much of it leaks into external ecosystems, never returning to the platform or the event owner.
In 2026, the most successful platforms will be those that keep this data in-house and use it to:
- set smarter pricing policies
- improve recommendations
- predict churn
- design more efficient fee strategies
- support promoters with actionable intelligence
- build loyalty rooted in behaviour, not points
Data is becoming the new margin.The next cycle of ticketing leadership will belong to those who own it.
5. From feature-driven roadmaps to infrastructure thinking
The last era of ticketing focused heavily on features: embedded wallets, crypto experiments, seat upgrades, virtual queues, mobile transfer, insurance, memberships.
The next era is different.
It’s about the systems that allow features to exist without breaking:
- rules engines
- payout orchestration
- tax and compliance consistency
- visibility and eligibility logic
- dynamic liquidity management
- lifecycle identity
- internal marketplaces
- cross-event discovery
- promoter-level governance
As Iñaki Sánchez López explains:
“The future isn’t about who builds the most buttons. It’s about who builds the foundation where buttons actually work.”
This is why resale, when done internally and natively under the primary brand, is no longer a feature. It is an infrastructure requirement.
What this means for product leaders heading into 2026
For those leading product, engineering or strategy inside ticketing companies, the next 12 months demand clarity around three questions:
- Which parts of the ticket lifecycle do we want to own?
Because if you don’t own them, someone else will. - What infrastructure are we missing?
Not features — foundations. - Where can we create continuous value, not one-time value?
This is the question that separates category leaders from everyone else.
How infrastructure-first players are approaching the shift
In recent years, a new category of infrastructure-first companies has begun to emerge within ticketing.
Rather than adding isolated features on top of legacy systems, these players focus on building native, lifecycle-aware foundations that allow platforms to manage complexity, liquidity and governance internally.
menta tech is one example of this approach.
Rather than operating as a secondary marketplace, menta works directly with primary ticketing platforms, enabling them to run resale and post-purchase activity internally — under their own brand, rules and governance.
Its API-first, white-label architecture combines rules management, operational orchestration and revenue logic into a single infrastructure layer designed for multi-touch ticket journeys at scale.
The underlying principle is simple: post-purchase activity is not an edge case.
It is core system behaviour.
About menta tech
menta tech is a ticketing infrastructure company built to support the full lifecycle of a ticket beyond the initial sale.
Working directly with primary ticketing platforms across the US, Europe and Latin America, menta enables resale and post-purchase activity to run natively within existing platforms, rather than being outsourced to external ecosystems.
By combining governance, operations and revenue logic into a single white-label, API-first layer, menta helps platforms regain control over liquidity, data and fan experience across markets.
Closing: 2026 marks the beginning of the infrastructure decade
Ticketing is entering a new phase of maturity.
The next category leaders will not be defined by how many features they ship, but by how well they design for the invisible parts of the system: complexity, liquidity, behavioural data and lifecycle continuity.
The era of the one-time ticket is ending. The era of continuous value platforms is beginning.
And those who build for the full lifecycle, not just the first conversion, will shape the next decade of this industry.
