The value of initial public offerings carried out on European stock exchanges in the first quarter of 2026 reached €4.7 billion across 12 listings. Activity in both primary and secondary share issues shows that investors still have significant capital available, but market conditions remain challenging. Increased volatility observed at the end of March, combined with ongoing geopolitical uncertainty, may limit investor appetite for new public offerings in the short term until the macroeconomic and political environment stabilises, according to the latest “IPO Watch EMEA” report prepared by experts from PwC Poland.
Summary of the first quarter of 2026 on the Warsaw Stock Exchange
At the start of 2026, public offering activity on the Warsaw Stock Exchange was minimal. There was only one debut on the alternative NewConnect market: Farm Innovations, a company operating in the field of innovative technologies for pets and livestock. The value of the offering amounted to PLN 4.7 million, or around €1.1 million. This represents a 99.7% decline in activity on the Warsaw exchange compared with the same period in 2025, when two offerings were carried out, including the IPO of Diagnostyka S.A., with a combined value of PLN 1.7 billion, or around €403 million.
Despite the absence of new debuts on the WSE Main Market in the first quarter, the market closely followed information about planned offerings by Polish companies. Of particular importance is the IPO of Rex Concepts, the franchisee of the Burger King and Popeyes brands, which will be the first debut on the WSE Main Market in more than 10 months since Arlen joined the exchange. The company placed the full pool of shares at PLN 14 per share, 20% below the maximum price, which will translate into gross proceeds of around PLN 448 million from the new issue.
“It should be noted that the offering was also addressed to institutional investors outside Poland, including qualified investors from the United States, while only 3.4% of the offered shares went to individual investors. On the one hand, this shows that the Polish capital market remains attractive to global institutional investors and is able to attract relatively large offerings even in an environment of heightened uncertainty. On the other hand, the significant price reduction compared with the maximum level and the low share of individual investors point to cautious appetite. The Rex Concepts IPO will therefore be an important test for the entire market: both as a signal of the return of larger debuts to the WSE and as a barometer of the real readiness of investors, both Polish and foreign, to finance the growth of domestic companies through the stock exchange,” said Kamil Wardzyński, Director in the Capital Markets team at PwC Poland.
Summary of the European IPO market
The beginning of 2026 brought a moderate recovery in the European IPO market, continuing the improvement seen in the second half of 2025. In the first quarter, investors remained cautiously optimistic, while European markets proved more resilient than US markets. While the S&P 500 fell by around 5%, European indices remained relatively stable. However, increased volatility at the end of March, linked to the escalation of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, once again raised market uncertainty.
In the first quarter of 2026, 12 companies debuted on European stock exchanges, raising a combined €4.7 billion. This represents an increase of around 50% in IPO value compared with the same period last year. Activity, however, was heavily concentrated around a small number of large transactions. The largest listing was the €3.3 billion IPO of CSG on Euronext Amsterdam. It was the largest IPO in Europe since 2022 and the largest offering in the global defence sector on record.
The market structure clearly shows a shift in investor interest towards sectors considered more resilient to macroeconomic volatility. Industrial companies, especially those in the defence sector, accounted for around 83% of the value of European debuts in the first quarter, while three of the five largest IPOs in Europe were defence companies. In addition to CSG, the largest transactions included the debuts of Vincorion, which raised €405 million, and Gabler Group, which raised €116 million, on Deutsche Börse, as well as General Oceans, which raised €93 million, on Oslo Børs.
This reflects strong demand trends, higher security spending and relatively favourable valuations. At the same time, many issuers decided to postpone their listing plans until the second half of 2026 or 2027, waiting for more stable market conditions.
At present, for the global IPO market, as for the global economy, the key and fundamental uncertainty is the development of the geopolitical situation in the Middle East.
“A rapid de-escalation of the conflict could support the reopening of transaction windows in the second half of 2026, while a prolonged conflict carries the risk of additional inflationary pressure and a negative impact on global economic growth. Such a scenario would be highly damaging for capital markets and would halt the positive growth trend that has been building for more than a year. It is worth emphasising that a strong pipeline of companies ready for IPO and maturing private equity assets create favourable conditions for capital markets once the geopolitical situation improves. Listing plans being shifted to the second half of the year and into the following year reflect the expectations of issuers and shareholders regarding a more favourable market window, one that would allow them to meet valuation ambitions while also ensuring a sustainable positive performance over the long term after the debut,” said Bartosz Margol, Partner and Capital Markets Leader at PwC Poland.
IPO Watch EMEA report
Starting from the first quarter of 2024, the IPO Watch Europe report was replaced by IPO Watch EMEA. In addition to Europe, the new report also covers the Middle East and Africa as part of its IPO market analysis.
The IPO Watch EMEA report covers listings on major exchanges in the EMEA region, including exchanges in the European Union, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway, Turkey, Serbia, Switzerland, the Middle East and Africa. It is published quarterly. Transfers between markets within the same exchange are not included in the statistics. The report covers the period from 1 January to 31 March 2026 and is based on the dates of debuts of shares or rights to shares.
The IPO Watch EMEA report includes only offerings with a value above USD 5 million. The data excludes listed closed-end funds, business development companies and transactions on unregulated markets. To ensure comparability, data for previous periods presented in the IPO Watch EMEA report has been restated accordingly. The commentary on the Polish market discusses all debuts on the WSE Main Market and the unregulated NewConnect market, regardless of value.
