While 2025 was a challenging year for PE fundraising in Europe, the market is expected to recover in the new year as M&A and exit activity start to ramp up. However, the pace of the recovery remains uncertain. “We already started working [in December] on deals for 2026, so the things that normally would have only kicked off in January or February, those processes have already started in the last couple of weeks,” said Thiha Tun, partner at law firm Goodwin. “A lot of activity is in credit secondaries, although it is still a relatively small proportion of the overall capital raising market. In relative terms, PE secondaries fundraising may be slower than other asset classes, but overall, there is still more PE dry powder than all the other asset classes put together.” Tun added that he is also keeping a close eye on infrastructure secondaries as the asset class has become more prominent over the past year. “Infra as an asset class is very different from PE or credit, and requires dedicated expertise and skills that not many secondaries buyers had. So it was not something they have really looked into until recently, where people noticed a number of large infrastructure funds are coming to the end of their lives, and they have assets to exit,” Tun said. “So the buy side has been prompted by the sell-side supply coming into the market.”
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