AEM Forms Early Access, October 2026: Agentic Form Filling, Attachment Scanning, and Document APIs (All Still EA)

Adobe’s AEM Forms Early Access page was last updated October 20, 2026, and it now lists several items worth a look. Everything below is Early Access, not generally available. The page doesn’t give finer status labels, and most items don’t state an access process. The general route is to email aem-forms-ea@adobe.com from your official address.

Listed in the 2026.9.0 release notes (Forms Early Access section)

1. File attachment virus scanning and custom validation (EA). Adaptive Forms can send each uploaded attachment to a scanner or validator you choose before it’s persisted. You implement a FileAttachmentValidator service, so the engine is your choice (antivirus, malware scanner or custom logic). Files are checked in memory, so a rejected file never reaches the repository. You can register several validators and assign one, or none, per form. Adobe has docs on custom validators and a ClamAV tutorial. If you take file uploads on public forms, this closes a real gap, but you own the scanning engine, its updates and its failure handling.

2. Document Conversion APIs (EA). Synchronous services for HTML to PDF, PostScript to PDF, PDF to images, PDF to PostScript, and PDF transparency flattening. They use OAuth authentication. Test fidelity on your own documents, because “preserving fidelity” is Adobe’s description, not a result I’ve verified.

3. Table component for Adaptive Forms (EA). Based on Core Components, it collects structured multi-record data, such as employment history or expense lines, with customizable rows and columns. The release notes mention sorting, repeatable rows and calculations.

4. Locale support for Interactive Communication (EA). Authors pick a supported locale in the Interactive Communication Editor to apply regional date, number and currency formatting, limited to the locales the editor supports.

Also on the EA page (I couldn’t confirm when these were added)

5. Agentic Form Filling (EA). Users complete a published Adaptive Form through an AI assistant, a website chatbot or WhatsApp, either field group by field group or in natural language that AI extracts. It needs published forms with supported rules and validations and a configured submit action. Adobe says personal details are masked before answers go to the AI model. That’s a vendor statement, so have your privacy and security team validate it before using real customer data. Access is via email with your organization ID and program details.

6. Conversational Forms (EA). A chat-style interface you drag onto an AEM Sites page with no coding. It has been EA since before this month.

7. Forms Scaffolder CLI (EA). A command-line tool that generates code and wiring for custom components in AEM Forms Edge Delivery Services projects.

8. Forms Service APIs and Doc Generation API (EA). Forms Service APIs generate interactive PDFs from Designer templates, pre-filled with XML data, and import, extract and validate data. The Doc Generation API can upload generated PDFs to Azure Blob Storage, which you must provide.

9. Visual Rule Editor enhancements (EA). Direct API integration without a Form Data Model, by entering a JSON URL or importing a cURL command, using the Invoke Service action.

One thing to double-check

The EA page also lists “Improved accessibility for form components” (WCAG-oriented <fieldset> and <legend> markup for checkbox groups, radio groups and panels). I’ve seen this described as documented in a 2026 release note as well, so the status may differ by source. Check the current release notes before treating it as GA.

Bottom line

If you handle uploads, the attachment validator is the most practical item here. If you’re exploring AI-driven intake, Agentic Form Filling deserves a sandbox pilot with synthetic data first. Keep all of it out of production commitments until it leaves Early Access.

Has anyone been accepted into the Forms EA program? How long it took, and how the attachment validator or agentic filling behaved in a real pilot, would be valuable to hear.