Middle East IPO Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Mia Scarlett (Business & Capital Markets) | Last updated: September 18, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
Gulf IPO proceeds have raised less than US$1.1bn in 2026 to date — less than Sub-Saharan Africa’s US$1.37bn over the same stretch. Two years ago the region was pitching itself as the venue that stayed open while London and Hong Kong closed. Axis Intelligence Research finds the gap is not demand. It is execution.
Quick Answer
The Middle East and North Africa recorded 49 IPOs raising US$7.3bn in 2025, down 9.3% by count and 41.8% by proceeds from 2024’s US$12.6bn. In the first half of 2026, EY recorded MENA declines of nearly 80% in IPO count and over 90% in proceeds. The Saudi Exchange’s main market hosted one IPO in Q1 2026, raising US$67m against US$1.8bn from five listings in Q1 2025 — a 96.3% fall. Axis Intelligence Research’s MENA IPO Concentration Index (MICI) reads 67.2 on the identified Q1 2026 deal set, its highest level in the series.
Key Findings
- Axis Intelligence Research finds that MENA average IPO deal size fell from US$233.3m in 2024 to US$149.0m in 2025, a 36.1% contraction driven by the shift of listing volume onto Saudi Arabia’s Nomu parallel market.
- According to EY’s MENA IPO Eye Q4 2025 report, Saudi Arabia accounted for 39 of the region’s 49 IPOs in 2025 and US$4.9bn of US$7.3bn in proceeds — 79.6% of deal count and 67.1% of capital raised.
- Axis Intelligence Research finds MENA issuers converted 52.6% of declared listing intentions into completed IPOs in Q4 2025: 10 listings against 19 issuers that had told EY they planned to list by year-end as of 14 October 2025.
- The Saudi Exchange’s Q1 2026 main-market proceeds of US$67m were 26.9 times smaller than the US$1.8bn raised in Q1 2025, the weakest opening quarter since 2018.
- Axis Intelligence Research’s MENA IPO Concentration Index peaked at 65.9 in Q3 2025 and fell to 31.4 in Q4 2025 — the only quarter in the series in which a non-Gulf exchange, Casablanca, supplied the largest deal.
How Many IPOs Did the Middle East Have in 2026?
The honest answer is that the region has produced a handful, and the handful is the story.
EY’s Q2 2026 Global IPO Trends report singles out MENA as the starkest regional illustration of how fast an open window can shut, recording year-over-year declines of nearly 80% in the number of IPOs and over 90% in proceeds. That is not a soft patch. It is a market that stopped pricing.
The trigger is dated. According to MEED’s April 2026 assessment of the regional listing market, the conflict involving the US, Israel and Iran began on 28 February 2026. Everything on either side of that date reads differently. Before it, EY had counted 18 companies and funds signalling intent to list in early 2026, 16 of them in Saudi Arabia. After it, the Gulf book-building calendar effectively cleared.
What did get away:
| Issuer | Exchange | Proceeds (US$m) | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gourmet Egypt | EGX | 28 | 1 Feb 2026 | MEED |
| Saleh Abdulaziz Al-Rashed & Sons | Tadawul Main Market | 67 | 11 Mar 2026 | MEED |
| Trolley General Trading | Boursa Kuwait Premier Market | 195 | Mar 2026 | MEED / Dealogic |
| Dar El Balad | Tadawul Main Market | not disclosed at source | May 2026 | Enterprise |
Trolley’s US$195m private placement, on which EFG Hermes acted as global coordinator and bookrunner, was the largest IPO in the Middle East and Africa in the first quarter of 2026 according to Dealogic. The offer was upsized from 30% to 35% of issued share capital on demand. A Kuwaiti retailer, upsizing, becoming the regional deal of the quarter — that is the shape of a market where the large issuers have stepped back and the mid-cap ones have not.
Mia Scarlett: The number that should worry a Gulf ECM desk is not the proceeds figure. It is the free float arithmetic behind it. When the biggest book in the region is a 35% placement at US$195m, the fee pool that supported a dozen international bookrunner mandates in 2022 simply does not exist. Bloomberg reported in September 2026 that HSBC and EFG Hermes were redirecting attention to Egypt, Turkey and India. Desks follow deal flow; they do not wait for it.
What Are the Saudi IPO Statistics for 2026?
Saudi Arabia is the region’s listing engine, and the engine idled.
The Saudi Exchange’s 1st Quarter Statistical Report 2026 puts TASI’s Q1 close at 11,249.54 points, down 6.45% year over year, with equity market capitalisation of SAR 9,858.85bn (US$2,629.03bn) and quarterly traded value of SAR 291.07bn (US$77.62bn), itself down 19.72%. By the half-year report TASI stood at 10,799.92, market capitalisation at SAR 9,436.00bn (US$2,516.27bn) and H1 traded value at SAR 616.57bn (US$164.42bn), down 10.39% year over year on a 7.64% rise in share volume and an 11.79% fall in the number of trades.
That combination — more shares changing hands across fewer, larger transactions, at a lower aggregate value — is an institutional market clearing risk, not a retail market chasing allocations. It is also a market in which nobody wants to price a new issue.
Tadawul Main Market and Nomu IPO Data
| Period | Main market IPOs | Main market proceeds (US$m) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 2025 | 5 | 1,800 | EY MENA IPO Eye Q1 2025 |
| Q1 2026 | 1 | 67 | MEED |
The year-over-year fall is 96.3%. Put the other way, Q1 2025 raised 26.9 times what Q1 2026 raised on the same venue, and the Q1 2026 total was the weakest start to a year since 2018, when the main market opened the year with no listings at all.
Nomu tells a quieter version of the same story. Saudi Arabia hosted 39 IPOs in 2025 — 15 on the main market, 24 on Nomu — raising US$4.9bn between them, with the majority of capital coming through main-market listings. The parallel market carried the deal count; the main market carried the money. When the main market stops, proceeds fall off a cliff while the count decays more slowly. That is exactly the pattern in the 2025 annual data, where MENA count fell 9.3% and proceeds fell 41.8%.
The approval backlog nobody is clearing
Applications did not dry up. The Capital Market Authority’s quarterly statistical bulletin records 33 IPO and listing applications in Q1 2026, of which 23 were for Nomu and 10 for the main market, against 45 at the end of Q4 2025. As of 14 October 2025, 13 Saudi companies and funds already held CMA approval.
Approval is not a listing. It is an option with an expiry date, and in 2026 most of those options have been allowed to run toward expiry rather than exercised.
Which Gulf Exchange Is Winning the Listing Race?
Neither Abu Dhabi nor Dubai took share from Riyadh during the freeze, because there was no share to take. What both did was keep the secondary market working while primary issuance stopped — and on that measure, 2026 was a good year for both.
| Exchange | Market capitalisation | As of | Trading detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saudi Exchange | US$2,516.27bn | 30 Jun 2026 | H1 traded value US$164.42bn, −10.39% y/y | Saudi Exchange |
| ADX | US$762.4bn (AED 2.8tn) | 30 Jun 2026 | H1 traded value AED 171bn; institutions 78% of value | ADX |
| DFM | AED 1tn milestone crossed | 17 Jun 2026 | Q1 average daily traded value above AED 1bn, +56% y/y | Dubai Media Office / DFM |
ADX reported international investors at 48% of total trading value in H1 2026 and market makers at 15%, up three percentage points year over year. DFM reported foreign investors at 54% of Q1 trading value and 79% of new investor registrations. ADX added four new listings in the half, two of them dual-listed exchange-traded funds from the New York Stock Exchange.
Mia Scarlett: Read those two facts together and the UAE strategy becomes legible. With no IPO pipeline to convert, both exchanges spent 2026 buying liquidity and access instead of issuance — market-maker coverage, cross-listed products, infrastructure upgrades, revised circuit-breaker floors. It is the unglamorous half of running an exchange, and it is the half that determines what the order book looks like when the window reopens. An exchange that loses its market makers during a freeze does not get them back on the first deal.
The UAE’s primary market had already thinned before the war. It produced three IPOs in 2025 raising US$1.1bn between ADX and DFM, against seven the year before.
Axis MENA IPO Concentration Index (MICI)
Headline proceeds hide the real risk in this market, which is that one deal usually carries the quarter. Axis Intelligence Research built the MENA IPO Concentration Index to measure it.
MICI = 0.5 × (largest single IPO’s proceeds ÷ total MENA IPO proceeds in the period × 100) + 0.5 × (lead jurisdiction’s IPO proceeds ÷ total MENA IPO proceeds in the period × 100)
Both components are expressed in percentage points, weighted equally, and the reading runs 0–100. A higher reading means a quarter’s capital raising depended more heavily on one transaction and one country. Every input is a sourced row in the accompanying dataset.
| Period | Top-deal share (%) | Lead-market share (%) | MICI | Largest deal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q2 2023 | 42.8 | 50.0 | 46.4 | ADNOC L&S (ADX) |
| Q2 2024 | 28.9 | 60.6 | 44.8 | Fakeeh Hospital (Tadawul) |
| Q1 2025 | 21.8 | 77.9 | 49.8 | Umm Al Qura (Tadawul) |
| Q3 2025 | 45.5 | 86.3 | 65.9 | Dar Al Majed (Tadawul) |
| Q4 2025 | 30.4 | 32.5 | 31.4 | SGTM (Casablanca) |
| FY 2025 | 7.2 | 67.1 | 37.2 | SGTM (Casablanca) |
| Q1 2026 (identified deals) | 67.2 | 67.2 | 67.2 | Trolley (Boursa Kuwait) |
Source for all components: EY MENA IPO Eye quarterly reports and MEED, as logged in the dataset. The Q1 2026 reading is computed on the three listings Axis identified from exchange and advisor disclosures — Gourmet Egypt, Al-Rashed and Trolley, totalling US$290m — and covers identified deals rather than a full regional tally.
Three readings matter.
Q3 2025 at 65.9 was the concentration peak of the pre-war period: Saudi Arabia supplied 86.3% of quarterly proceeds and a single Riyadh real-estate developer supplied 45.5%. Average deal size that quarter was US$67.1m against US$149.0m for the full year. A market raising two-thirds of a billion dollars across eleven deals, with one of them nearly half the total, is not deep — it is busy.
Q4 2025 at 31.4 is the one genuinely encouraging reading in the series, and it came from Morocco. Société Générale des Travaux du Maroc’s US$525.4m on the Casablanca Stock Exchange was the region’s largest listing that quarter, with Alec Holding’s US$381.2m on DFM second. For one quarter, MENA issuance was not a Saudi story, and the index fell by more than 18 points as a result.
Q1 2026 at 67.2 inverts the logic. Concentration rose not because one enormous deal dominated, but because almost nothing else priced. The same reading can describe a market carried by a giant and a market carried by a survivor. The deal-count column is what separates them.
What Does the MENA IPO Pipeline Actually Convert?
Pipeline announcements are the most-quoted and least-tested numbers in Gulf capital markets. Axis Intelligence Research tested one.
EY’s MENA IPO Eye Q3 2025 report recorded 19 companies and funds planning to list on MENA exchanges for the remainder of 2025 as of 14 October 2025. The region completed 10 IPOs in Q4 2025. That is a conversion rate of 52.6% — computed as completed listings divided by declared intentions, with both figures drawn from consecutive EY quarterly reports.
Roughly half of declared intent converted in a functioning quarter. The comparison for early 2026 is starker: 18 issuers declared intent for the opening of the year, 16 of them Saudi, and the Saudi main market delivered one listing in the whole of Q1.
Withdrawals were explicit rather than quiet. Saudi contractor Mutlaq Al Ghowairi pulled a US$800m Tadawul offering despite an oversubscribed institutional book. Al Habtoor shelved its DFM plans. Emirates Global Aluminium pushed its debut to 2027 at the earliest after conflict damage to a smelter. Banque du Caire and Qalaa Holding’s National Ports Management both moved to the autumn.
Mia Scarlett: An issuer that pulls a covered book is telling you something the proceeds table cannot. Al Ghowairi had the orders. What it did not have was confidence in where the shares would trade in week three — and in a market where only two of the thirteen 2025 Tadawul main-market listings had posted a share price increase by late December, that caution is arithmetic rather than nerves. Aftermarket performance is the real gating factor on this pipeline, and it was deteriorating before the first missile.
The counter-evidence arrived in May. Dar El Balad, a small-cap Saudi IT services firm, closed an institutional book 66.6 times oversubscribed and rose 28.21% on its Tadawul debut — the clearest post-conflict test of whether Gulf institutional demand had survived. Demand for the right asset at the right size never left. The issuers capable of absorbing a failed print did.
How Did the Conflict Change the Macro Case for Gulf Listings?
The valuation input changed, not just sentiment.
The World Bank cut its GCC growth forecast for 2026 to 1.3% in April, from 4.4% in January. Within that, Saudi Arabia was still projected at 3.1% while Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar were forecast to contract by 8.6%, 6.4% and 5.7% respectively. Those are not uniform shocks, and equity stories priced off regional growth assumptions written in January no longer stood up in April.
Two structural counterweights survived the quarter. Saudi Arabia removed its qualified foreign investor regime from 1 February 2026, opening the market to all foreign investors — a reform that shows up in the Saudi Exchange’s August 2026 foreign holding value of SAR 461.52bn (US$123.07bn). And the UAE exchanges kept upgrading market plumbing through the disruption.
A reopened window will meet a market that is structurally more accessible to international money than it was in 2024, with a backlog of approved issuers and a demonstrated bid for well-priced mid-caps. Whether the first large issuer through it prices to trade or prices to maximise is the question that determines whether the second one follows.
Methodology
Collection. Every figure on this page was retrieved from its source document during the production session of 18 September 2026 and logged with URL and retrieval date in the accompanying CSV. Regional quarterly and annual IPO series come from EY’s MENA IPO Eye reports (Q1 2023 through Q4 2025) and EY’s Q2 2026 Global IPO Trends report. Saudi market data comes from the Saudi Exchange’s 1st Quarter and 1st Half 2026 Statistical Reports and its published market statistics. Application and approval counts come from the Capital Market Authority of Saudi Arabia’s quarterly statistical bulletin. UAE exchange data comes from ADX’s H1 2026 market performance statement and DFM’s Q1 2026 trading statement and June 2026 market-capitalisation announcement. Deal-level 2026 data comes from MEED’s April 2026 regional listing assessment, Enterprise’s July 2026 quarterly scorecard and Bloomberg’s September 2026 reporting.
Derived values. Where EY published a rounded quarterly total alongside an exact top-deal percentage, Axis reconstructed the unrounded total and states the arithmetic: Q3 2025 proceeds of US$738.5m from US$336m at 45.5%, and Q4 2025 proceeds of US$1,728.3m from US$525.4m at 30.4%. Saudi Q1 2025 lead-market proceeds of US$1,869m are the sum of EY’s stated US$1.8bn main market and US$69m Nomu figures. Average deal size is annual proceeds divided by annual count. All arithmetic was verified in two independent passes, including exact rational arithmetic.
MICI construction. The index is computed only for periods in which both components are disclosed at source. Quarters where EY named a top deal but not a lead-jurisdiction proceeds figure are excluded rather than estimated. The Q1 2026 reading is explicitly computed on the Axis-identified deal set and labelled as such in both the table and the dataset. Methodology is fixed: components, weights and the identity of the source series will not change between readings, and no historical reading will be restated without a dated note.
Scope. EY’s MENA series counts listings by first trade date and excludes postponed and unpriced deals and OTC listings; direct listings are reported separately where they occur. Figures reported in AED and SAR are stated in their original currency with the source’s own dollar conversion where one was published.
About This Dataset
The full dataset ships as a CC BY 4.0 CSV with one row per observation and complete provenance: metric, value, unit, as-of date, geography, segment, source organisation, source document, source URL, retrieval date, primary-source flag, Axis-calculated flag and the method note carrying the formula for every derived figure. Attribution to Axis Intelligence Research is required; commercial reuse is permitted.
Cite this page
- APA: Axis Intelligence Research. (2026). Middle East IPO statistics 2026: Tadawul, ADX and DFM listing data. https://axis-intelligence.com/middle-east-ipo-statistics/
- MLA: Axis Intelligence Research. “Middle East IPO Statistics 2026: Tadawul, ADX and DFM Listing Data.” Axis Intelligence, 18 Sept. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/middle-east-ipo-statistics/.
- Chicago: Axis Intelligence Research. “Middle East IPO Statistics 2026: Tadawul, ADX and DFM Listing Data.” Axis Intelligence. September 18, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/middle-east-ipo-statistics/.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a CMA approval mean a Saudi IPO will actually happen?
No. A Capital Market Authority approval is time-limited permission to proceed, and issuers routinely let it lapse when pricing conditions deteriorate. Thirteen Saudi companies and funds held approval as of 14 October 2025; the main market produced one listing in the whole of Q1 2026. Treat approvals as an upper bound on near-term supply, not a forecast.
Why did MENA IPO proceeds fall 41.8% in 2025 while deal count fell only 9.3%?
Because the mix moved down-market. Saudi Arabia’s Nomu parallel market carried 24 of the country’s 39 listings in 2025 at small ticket sizes, while main-market issuance thinned. Axis Intelligence Research’s average-deal-size series shows the effect directly: US$233.3m per MENA IPO in 2024 against US$149.0m in 2025.
Is Nomu a realistic listing venue for an international issuer?
Nomu is a parallel market with lighter admission and disclosure requirements, designed for smaller domestic companies, and it dominates Saudi application volume — 23 of 33 Q1 2026 applications. The trade-offs are the ones that follow any junior market: thinner free float, wider spreads and limited institutional coverage. It builds a public track record; it does not deliver index inclusion or a deep institutional order book.
Which Gulf IPOs were pulled or postponed in 2026, and why?
Mutlaq Al Ghowairi withdrew a US$800m Tadawul offering despite an oversubscribed institutional book; Al Habtoor shelved its DFM listing; Emirates Global Aluminium deferred to 2027 or later after conflict damage to a smelter; Banque du Caire and National Ports Management moved to the autumn. The common thread is aftermarket risk rather than demand — only two of the thirteen Tadawul main-market listings of 2025 were trading above their offer price by late December.
What does a MICI reading of 65.9 tell an investor that proceeds data does not?
That the quarter’s capital raising rested on one deal and one jurisdiction. In Q3 2025, Saudi Arabia supplied 86.3% of MENA proceeds and a single real-estate developer supplied 45.5%. A regional allocation built on that quarter’s headline total would in practice have been a bet on one Riyadh issuer’s book.
Are ADX and DFM losing relevance because they have no IPO flow?
Their primary markets have thinned — three UAE IPOs in 2025 against seven in 2024 — but the secondary markets grew through the freeze. ADX reached AED 2.8tn in market capitalisation by June 2026 with institutions at 78% of trading value and international investors at 48%; DFM crossed AED 1tn and reported foreign investors at 54% of Q1 trading value. Issuance stopped; liquidity did not.
How does the Gulf compare with other emerging listing venues in 2026?
Gulf IPO proceeds were below US$1.1bn year to date as of mid-September 2026, behind Sub-Saharan Africa’s US$1.37bn, according to Bloomberg. That is a reversal of the 2022–2023 period, when Gulf issuance was cushioning global bank fee pools while London, Hong Kong and New York were quiet.
What would signal that the Gulf IPO window has genuinely reopened?
One completed main-market listing above roughly US$250m that holds its offer price through the first month. Book coverage is not the constraint — Dar El Balad printed 66.6 times oversubscribed in May 2026. The constraint is whether a large issuer is willing to leave enough on the table to reset aftermarket expectations for everyone behind it in the queue.
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