The year 2025 marked a near-record rebound in M&A, with global deal value rising 40%, to $4.9 trillion. Total M&A as a percentage of nominal GDP grew from 3.2% to 4.2% (see Figure 1). The rebound of 2025 was notably broad-based across industries and geographies, and it was fueled by a resurgence in megadeals valued at greater than $5 billion (see “Looking Back at M&A in 2025: Behind the Great Rebound”). The wave may not have crested.

Our survey of more than 300 M&A executives found that 80% expect to sustain or increase deal activity in 2026. The ingredients are in place: improving macro conditions, a growing backlog of private equity and venture capital assets ready for exit, and a widespread recognition that many traditional business models—from media to consumer products to legacy manufacturing—have reached the limits of their historical growth engines.

Figure 1

And 2025 was the year when the three great forces reshaping business—namely, technology disruption, post-globalization, and shifting profit pools—became impossible to ignore. AI’s operational benefits began to materialize even as new models and chips extended the technological frontier. Tariff shocks gave way to a deeper understanding of how fragmentation will reshape flows of goods, capital, IP, and labor. And profit pools shifted in ways that pushed companies to question long-standing assumptions about where and how they compete.

In 2026, these forces will make companies move from awareness to action. Leaders will revisit foundational strategic assumptions, rethink portfolio boundaries, and make bigger, bolder decisions about what capabilities they must own vs. access. M&A will play a central role in this reinvention—but it will also have to work harder, and companies will have to work harder at it.

Among the big hurdles: Capital allocations to M&A hit a 30-year low through the third quarter of 2025 as more of the cash flowed toward dividends, buybacks, capex, and R&D. Interest rates remain relatively high, and any economic slowdown will intensify scrutiny on investment choices. The bar for M&A returns is rising, forcing companies to pursue only the deals that deliver concrete value creation.

How reinvention will spur M&A in 2026

In today’s fast-changing world, companies need to adapt. As companies accept that technology disruption, post-globalization, and shifting profit pools are permanent features of the competitive landscape, the strategic question shifts from whether to reinvent to how quickly they can do so. M&A will be a critical tool for translating strategic shifts into action, enabling companies to reposition portfolios, access critical capabilities, and move ahead of structural changes that can no longer be deferred.

Let’s step back and look at how the three great forces will shape M&A.

Technology disruption: The impact of technology advancements from AI to robotics to quantum computing are nascent, but the implications for firm strategies, product offerings, and operations are profound. Deals such as OpenAI’s acquisition of io and its hardware platform and ServiceNow’s purchase of Moveworks for its natural language platform will continue as technology companies race to strategically integrate AI into their products and workflows.

Almost half of all technology deals already have an AI angle, a trend that will accelerate as industry players pursue assets for AI talent and technology (see “M&A in Software: Five Secrets to Creating Real Value When Acquiring AI Assets”). Deals for technology will continue to flourish outside of tech. In machinery and equipment, for example, nearly one in five deals are for technology assets to build out hardware and software solutions (see “M&A in Machinery and Equipment: The Strategic Rise of Software”).

Post-globalization: Growing constraints around the global movement of products, capital, and people are fragmenting markets. In 2026 and beyond, companies will make bolder moves to double down on some parts of their global footprint and minimize exposure to others. M&A and divestitures will be critical tools to rapidly execute that realignment. When opportunity and risk are in tension, companies turn to alternate deal structures such as joint ventures or minority investments to gain more optionality. It’s a trend best illustrated by the pursuit of creative alliances between Western pharmaceuticals and Greater China’s early-stage pharma companies in lieu of traditional acquisitions (see “M&A in Pharmaceuticals: Bigger, Bolder, and Far More Strategic”).

Shifting profit pools: Industry evolution is an evergreen pressure on portfolio strategy. One example is how direct access to consumers via streaming and social media disintermediates traditional players and spurs M&A. Consider deals such as the pending sale of Warner Bros. Discovery to a Hollywood upstart announced late in 2025, or the increasing pace of insurgent brand acquisitions by large consumer products companies (see “M&A in Consumer Products: Searching for the Parenting Advantage”). Consumer products M&A highlights another key response to shifting profit pools: divestitures and spins. More than half of companies in our executive survey are prepping assets for sale within the next few years, driven by a desire to gain focus, free up cash, and capitalize on higher valuations in today’s market.

The capital constraint

All of this is happening at a time when there’s never been as much demand for capital. In fact, despite the great rebound, the proportion of capital allocated to M&A hit a 30-year low in 2025 (see Figure 2). Company balance sheets are healthy, but there are competing demands for capital.

Figure 2

Companies face pressure to regularly return profits to shareholders through buybacks and dividends. Such distributions provide short-term earnings growth but create little to no long-term shareholder returns, except in very mature or declining sectors.

More recently, companies have increased reinvestment through capex and R&D. One big driver is the Mag 7’s $500 billion of investments amid an AI infrastructure build-out. For everyone else, there’s a new urgency to modernize enterprise technology to better extract value from proprietary data assets through AI and automated labor-intensive processes. Many have revisited the calculus for lean supply chains and chosen to build multipolar manufacturing footprints and distribution networks, a more expensive if more resilient approach. These are important investments, but they don’t need to preclude companies with healthy balance sheets from pursuing significant M&A.

How to value M&A against competing uses of cash? Frequent acquirers benefit from a track record of performance and the ability to deliver on synergies. Our research confirms this: 75% of frequent acquirers meet or exceed synergy targets, according to our global survey of more than 300 M&A executives. Companies with less experience in M&A may find it hard to value assets, given uneven performance in completed deals. They will need to do more rigorous diligence to gain conviction and begin building their own repeatable models.

M&A agenda for 2026

Ground M&A in the new strategic context. The three big forces mean that the scope for transformation has never been more profound or necessary. Technology disruption is changing where and how work gets done, redefining the role of automation, data, and human talent across the value chain. Post-globalization is forcing companies to rethink proximity to customers, production footprints, and trade-offs between resiliency and efficiency. And shifting profit pools are challenging long-held assumptions about which businesses deserve capital, and which no longer do. In this environment, the M&A agenda must advance the transformation agenda. Executives need to pressure test whether M&A pathways and specific deals will help the company better compete in the most attractive markets, build capabilities more quickly, or even exit when they no longer are the best owner.

Make big bets pay off. Megadeals defined the market in 2025. In the year ahead, companies will face a series of make-or-break decisions to ensure value creation as a much larger combined company. According to our research, results from big deals are all over the map. What sets the winners apart? They deliver outsized returns by using the deal to transform. They don’t get caught up in resolving internal complexity in the first wave of change. They focus the integration on the short list of key value drivers. In a world in which AI and automation are creating urgency to optimize business processes and evolve new customer value propositions, managing a massive integration raises the stakes further. Winning companies will use an integration thesis to set the appropriate order of operations—namely, where to stabilize and integrate, and where and when to transform—and be prepared to make difficult choices on what to tackle first. We explore this transformation-led approach in “M&A in Energy and Natural Resources: The Rise of the Oil and Gas Serial Acquirer.”

Take a full potential view in due diligence. As capital is constrained and the bar for M&A rises, diligence is no longer just about validating a deal; it’s also about confirming that M&A is the best use of capital. Then, to compete for the best deals, companies can rapidly develop deep (outside-in) insights, guided by a clear deal thesis tied to strategy. They can go beyond high-level synergy assessments to define how cost and revenue synergies will be achieved and when. They can surface deal risks and opportunities and tee up how to own and integrate the asset for maximum value creation. In our experience, this rigorous, thesis-led approach to diligence is the best way for infrequent acquirers to bend the experience curve and compete with more seasoned buyers.

Build an M&A capability for the next chapter. A repeatable M&A model that drives outperformance requires intentional investment over time. After several years of muted deal activity, many acquirers (frequent and infrequent alike) find their M&A muscles underdeveloped: Teams have turned over, playbooks are outdated, and institutional memory has faded. At the same time, expectations for speed, insight, and execution quality are rising. Advances in AI are already allowing leading acquirers to move faster in screening, diligence, and integration planning, extracting deeper insights earlier in the deal process. Companies that invest now in end-to-end M&A capabilities will be better positioned to compete for assets, build conviction in value creation, and deliver synergies more quickly. See how AI is impacting M&A value creation today in “M&A Capability for a New Era: Five Ways AI Is Creating More Value in M&A Right Now.”

Refresh strategic capital allocation. CFOs have a few tools at their fingertips to navigate competing demands for capital. It’s critical to maintain a long-term, multiyear view of capital planning with clarity on big strategic investments in timing and size for capex, M&A, and R&D. The view needs to be regularly refreshed to stay relevant. Also important: clearly articulating to investors the strategic role of M&A in capital allocation. Make sure your investors understand your strategy. And when you are no longer the best parent for a given asset or business, free up capital through well-planned divestitures.