As mentioned in this month's Sustainability Insider, CDP — formerly Carbon Disclosure Project — recently published their 2026 questionnaire, along with their scoring methodology and reporting guidance. Workiva — a Gold Accredited Solution Provider for CDP — will likewise soon update Sustainability Explorer to help you prepare for the 2026 disclosure cycle.

Explore 2026 CDP questionnaire content

To start, you'll soon be able to include the 2026 CDP questionnaire content — for both Corporate and Small & Medium Enterprise (SME) organizations — in Sustainability Explorer.

With the 2026 questionnaire, CDP introduces:

- Alignment with global reporting standards, like European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Sustainability Disclosure Standards, and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol

- New Ocean questions, to enable the disclosure of impacts, risks, and dependencies on marine ecosystems (these responses will be unscored for the 2026 cycle)

- Expanded Forests scope, adding cocoa, coffee, and rubber to other scored commodities like timber, palm oil, cattle, and soy within a single, unified Forests score

- Focus on adaptation and resilience, with adjusted scoring and expanded questions to demonstrate concrete, business-related actions toward physical climate adaptation

- Updated Energy & Land sector — including minor adjustments to energy reporting — to help ensure strict alignment with RE 100 and GHG Protocol

- SME "A List" eligibility, to enable SME organizations to officially achieve a Leadership-level "A" score

When the 2026 CDP content is available in Sustainability Explorer, you can begin to prepare responses for your submission as you browse and explore the questions:

- Align 2026 questions with the corresponding metrics in Sustainability Program.

- Bookmark material questions to enable quick reference across the workspace.

- Discuss questions and their reporting guidance with other workspace members as Comments.

Prepare 2026 submission with CDP Questionnaire

CDP plans to open their response window for submissions through the CDP Portal mid-June. Likewise, CDP Questionnaire in Sustainability Explorer will then update to enable the setup of questionnaires tailored to the questions for your company's 2026 submission. From CDP Questionnaire, you can collaborate with workspace members on each question's responses and update responses within your CDP Portal submission — directly from your Sustainability Reporting workspace!

As with the 2025 questionnaire, you'll be able to view each question's guidance from CDP and any corresponding Program metrics. With the 2026 questionnaire, you'll also be able to:

- Discuss responses with collaborators through Comments

- Set the status of responses to help track their progress, and update the corresponding statuses in your CDP Portal submission 

CDP's deadline for scored responses will be the week of September 14, at which point you'll continue to be able to update your CDP submission with amendments or unscored responses. When CDP closes their submission window the week of October 26, you'll no longer be able to update your submission from CDP Questionnaire.

Stay tuned to What's New in Sustainability Reporting for a heads up as Sustainability Explorer updates with these — and other — new features and enhancements!