Accelerating success with the Red Hat Partner Program

The Red Hat Partner Program continues to evolve with enhancements centered on the entire partner lifecycle and designed to deliver three core outcomes for partners: simplicity, predictability, and profitability.

Today, we are excited to introduce the latest updates to the Red Hat Partner Program. With these enhancements, Red Hat is providing a structure that prioritizes co-investment to drive profitability across core business areas for partners. By actively investing in partner programs, incentives and digital tooling, we can more seamlessly enable accelerated growth, reduce friction and expand market reach for our collective success. 

Let’s take a closer look at the newest improvements to the Red Hat partner experience and how these changes are designed to drive partner profitability:  

Unleashing predictable and profitable incentives

Red Hat’s incentives strategy is shifting away from simple reimbursement towards predictable rewards that better compensate partners who invest in Red Hat technologies and solutions. New incentives will reward partners for valuable activities throughout the entire customer lifecycle, including critical pre-sales activities like workshops and assessments. This new offering, separate from traditional Market Development Funds (MDF), is designed to reduce the necessity for partners to make upfront investments in order to participate in incentive benefits.

A major enhancement driving incentives is the expansion of rebates and deal registration to cover additional indirect routes to market, including OEM and cloud opportunities. This significantly broadens partner eligibility for incentives and will help increase profitability for a wider range of partners. Additionally, partners will benefit from improved deal protection so they can feel more confident in their engagements with Red Hat. 

Lastly, to help ensure that partner incentives reflect Red Hat’s most critical emerging markets, bookings activities are expanding to explicitly include application services and AI, in addition to product segments like RHEL, OpenShift, and Ansible Automation Platform. This move rewards partners for selling success in key strategic growth areas in addition to existing product categories. 

Evolving for recognition and growth

Red Hat’s program structure is evolving to align with modern business models and create clearer pathways for recognition and rewards. We are pleased to announce a new Cloud program module for Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Providers (CCSPs). This module will become available later this year and marks a critical programmatic shift to align with the consumption economy by focusing on Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) for points, instead of traditional bookings. 

Furthermore, Red Hat continues to enhance its Specialized Partner program to elevate partners who demonstrate deep technical expertise and proven service capabilities. The Red Hat Specialized Partner program now features an open application, replacing the previous nomination process, allowing partners to self-nominate. As an added reward for their investment, Specialized Partners will earn an increased number of points, which can unlock deeper benefits, for each specialization that they complete. 

To foster greater collaboration, the Sell With module is moving to open enrollment for any qualified partner. This simplified, accelerated, and consistent enrollment experience opens new pathways for revenue growth for partners jointly selling solutions with Red Hat. 

Delivering autonomy and efficiency through digital transformation

The latest digital enhancements to the Red Hat Partner Portal are designed to improve efficiency, autonomy, and the ease of doing business with Red Hat. This includes launching automated crediting for marketing and demand generation activities that are managed through the Red Hat Partner Demand Center and approved for MDF funding. This removes the manual submission burden for partners, increasing participation and improving data accuracy.

We have also implemented a more consistent digital enrollment workflow across all Red Hat Partner Program modules, providing a smoother, more user-friendly onboarding process. Furthermore, functionality is expanding to include increased permissions for partner users, giving partners greater control and visibility over opportunities, progress, and point accumulation. 

Empowering an ecosystem of innovators

These cumulative enhancements across incentives, programs, and digital experience are designed to increase partner trust, reduce friction, and, most importantly, drive increased pipeline and revenue for both partners and Red Hat in 2026 and beyond.

Our core mission remains clear: for the Red Hat partner ecosystem to be a powerful growth engine for open source innovation and at the forefront of the next generation of IT. These updates are the operationalization of this commitment, delivering measurable benefits across critical pillars of success for partners. 

Learn more about the Red Hat Partner Program and find helpful resources in the Red Hat Content Center.