One WELL: IWBI's 2026 Plan to Unify the WELL Building Standard

One WELL is the next major update to the WELL Building Standard, scheduled to launch in the later part of 2026. Announced by International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) CEO Rachel Hodgdon at the Tokyo WELL Summit, it consolidates every WELL product into a single library of strategies and shifts the standard's center of gravity from periodic version releases toward a continuously evolving system supported by AI and operational data.

For sustainability directors, architects, and facility managers working on WELL projects, this is one of the most significant changes since WELL v2. Below is what Hodgdon shared about One WELL, the WELL for Residential numbers, and IWBI's plan to evolve from a certification body into what she called a "Health Intelligence" organization.

What is One WELL?

One WELL is the new, integrated version of the WELL Building Standard. It consolidates ratings, certifications, WELL for Residential, and (eventually) WELL for Community into a single library of strategies. Instead of treating each product as a separate system, One WELL lets project teams filter and combine strategies across products and earn points that count toward multiple WELL designations at once.

According to Hodgdon, the change is unusual for the green building industry because the main objective is not to raise environmental thresholds. It is to improve the experience of pursuing certification.

Our primary objective in creating this new version of WELL was to enhance the user experience of participating in the WELL certification process. To make it easier for you as consultants and as our customers to navigate the process from beginning to end and into re-certification, and to create delight in that process along the way.

— Rachel Hodgdon, CEO, IWBI

Why Isn't One WELL Raising the Thresholds?

Green building rating systems are under pressure to drive the market toward zero on energy, water, and carbon. The thresholds that protect human health are different. Air quality, water quality, lighting, and nourishment levels that are safe for occupants are relatively stable and do not need to ratchet up every few years.

That stability gives WELL room to invest a major release in usability without sacrificing rigor. The performance bar for things like PM2.5 or CO2 stays roughly where it is. What changes is how a project team navigates the documentation, the digital platform, and the path between different WELL achievements.

How Does Point-for-Point Interoperability Change WELL Projects?

Under One WELL, a point earned toward a rating is also a point earned toward full certification. There is no separate accounting between products. A team pursuing the Health-Safety Rating, for example, accumulates points that carry directly into a future WELL Platinum submission without redoing the documentation.

Hodgdon framed this as a way to encourage incremental progress over time. Project teams can use ratings as on-ramps to full certification, or build up from one designation to another as the building matures and as the organization's program grows.

New designations launching with One WELL

Alongside the existing ratings, IWBI is adding several new designations:

• Real Estate Portfolio: for owners managing multiple assets under a single ESG strategy.
• Real Estate Operations and Maintenance: for ongoing operational performance of existing buildings.
• WELL Interiors: currently in working group, focused on tenant fit-outs.

The top of the new structure is the WELL Score, awarded when whole portfolios or organizations have engaged every asset in the WELL program.

Why is IWBI Calling This Its Last Major Version?

One WELL is designed so that IWBI never has to launch a "v3" or "v4" again. The system is built to update continuously, adding and refining strategies without disruptive multi-year transitions between versions. For consultants who have managed projects across WELL v1, WELL v2, and the various ratings, this removes the recurring cost of supporting parallel versions in the same portfolio.

If we've done this right, we'll never have to launch a new version of WELL again. The system is set up to continuously improve to the benefit and not to the burden of our customers.

— Rachel Hodgdon, CEO, IWBI

WELL for Residential: 47,000 Residences Enrolled

The WELL for Residential certification is the only global healthy home certification that applies to single-family homes, multi-family residences, new homes, and existing homes alike. IWBI originally piloted it with a target of 3,000 enrolled residences. Pilot enrollment instead reached more than 30,000 residences, and cumulative enrollment, with little marketing or promotion, has now reached 47,000 residences.

IWBI's governance council, which includes member Yasushi Kinoshita, has voted the residential standard out of pilot. The final version will integrate into the One WELL ecosystem, which Hodgdon noted is particularly useful for mixed-use projects that want to combine residential and commercial WELL strategies in the same building.

From Certification to Health Intelligence

The strategic move underneath One WELL is IWBI's evolution from a certification body into what Hodgdon called a Health Intelligence organization. Ten years ago, she said, the most common question she received was "What is the return on investment for participating in WELL?" That question has shifted.

Today, what our customers are asking is: What is the return on investment of my WELL space, of my WELL building, of my WELL portfolio, and for my organization?

— Rachel Hodgdon, CEO, IWBI

Answering that asset-specific question requires integrating data that has historically lived in silos. IWBI is one of the few organizations that holds all three of the following data strands in one place:

1. Achievement data. Which WELL strategies a project has implemented and verified.
2. Measured IAQ performance. On-site performance testing data and, increasingly, continuous monitoring data from sensors deployed in the building.
3. Human experience data. Occupant surveys, belonging scores, productivity scores, and data from wearables.

The bottleneck, Hodgdon said, is that these data streams currently do not talk to each other. They live in spreadsheets, PDFs, and forms. The One WELL platform applies a structured data approach so that all three can be analyzed together.

What Does Health Intelligence Look Like in Practice?

Hodgdon walked the audience through a set of illustrative examples. The integrated platform will be able to:

• Track IAQ compliance against WELL thresholds over time, across an asset or a portfolio.
• Compare measured IAQ performance against the specific WELL strategies a project has implemented.
• Track workforce well-being indicators, such as a belonging score, over time and correlate them with implemented strategies.
• Compare occupant survey results against IAQ trends. In one example, increases in IAQ satisfaction aligned with reductions in PM2.5 over the same period.
• Generate automated, verified progress reports that can be submitted to investors and to platforms like GRESB and LEED.
• Surface portfolio-level insights, such as flagging that two assets in the same portfolio have very different belonging scores and suggesting which Community concept strategies might explain the gap.

The "crowd favorite," in Hodgdon's words, is what she called infinite superlatives: an AI-driven way to surface what makes each project unique. IWBI's team currently spends hours validating claims like "first WELL-certified K-12 school in Northern Japan" or "first WELL-certified manufacturing facility in the Eastern Hemisphere." The new platform will surface those distinctions automatically.

Why This Matters for IAQ Data

Two of the three data strands behind Health Intelligence (measured IAQ performance and human experience) only become useful when the data is continuous, structured, and comparable across buildings. One-off performance testing produces a snapshot that ages quickly. Continuous monitoring data, paired with achievement records and occupant feedback, is what lets project teams answer the asset-specific ROI question Hodgdon described.

For owners and operators with WELL-certified buildings, this is the practical implication of One WELL: the value of your indoor air quality data is going up, because IWBI is building the platform that uses it. Projects already running continuous IAQ monitoring will have a head start when Health Intelligence features come online.

Read next: Air Quality Monitoring for WELL Certification

When Does One WELL Launch?

IWBI plans to launch One WELL in the later part of 2026. The new digital platform that supports it is already partially visible to existing users, and the standard's public comment period has closed. Hodgdon also disclosed that she is currently putting her own home through WELL for Residential certification with her parents, and is taking a week off this summer to complete the documentation.

For project teams currently scoping WELL strategies for 2026 or 2027 submissions, three implications are worth tracking: portfolio-level designations are coming, point-for-point interoperability will change how you sequence projects, and the data you collect today is what will feed the Health Intelligence platform when it goes live.