The largest private equity firms in Europe in 2026
21 SEPT, 2026
Europe's largest buyout houses no longer look like buyout houses. EQT, CVC Capital Partners and Ardian now generate a growing share of their fees from secondaries, credit and infrastructure rather than classic leveraged buyouts, and 2026 has brought the clearest sign yet of where that is heading: EQT's acquisition of secondaries specialist Coller Capital and CVC's purchase of US credit manager Marathon Asset Management. For fund selectors and allocators, the ranking below is as much about which platforms are consolidating around scale as it is about who currently holds the most capital.
How we ranked Europe's largest private equity firms
This ranking covers private equity and private markets firms headquartered in Europe, ordered by total assets under management (AUM) as disclosed in each firm's own financial results or official announcements. Because firms report AUM on different bases – some disclose total AUM, others only fee-paying AUM (FPAUM) – and in different currencies (euros, US dollars or Swiss francs), the figures below are approximate and not perfectly comparable across rows. Where a firm's disclosures were inconsistent or unaudited across sources, it was left out of the table rather than estimated.
The largest private equity firms in Europe by AUM (2026)
| Firm | Headquarters | AUM | As of | Core strategies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EQT | Stockholm, Sweden | €341bn (~$389bn) | 31 Aug 2026, post-Coller Capital | Private capital, infrastructure, real assets, secondaries |
| CVC Capital Partners | Luxembourg / London | €205bn | 31 Dec 2025 | Private equity, credit, secondaries, infrastructure |
| Ardian | Paris, France | $200bn | 2026 | Private equity, real assets, credit, secondaries |
| Partners Group | Baar-Zug, Switzerland | $185bn | 31 Dec 2025 | Private equity, infrastructure, real estate, credit |
| ICG | London, UK | $124bn | 30 Sep 2025 | Structured capital, secondaries, private debt, credit, real assets |
| Hg | London, UK | ~$110bn | 2026 | Software and technology buyouts |
Sources: EQT year-end and transaction reports; CVC full-year results; Ardian corporate announcements; Partners Group annual results; ICG interim results; Hg corporate disclosures. Figures are approximate and drawn from each firm's own reporting.
A second tier of well-established European houses – including Permira, Nordic Capital, Cinven, Bridgepoint, PAI Partners and Triton – also feature regularly in industry rankings such as Private Equity International's PEI 300, though several are privately held and disclose AUM less consistently, so precise comparable figures were not available for this table.
EQT: Europe's largest platform after the Coller Capital Deal
EQT ended 2025 with total AUM of €270 billion, according to its year-end report, split between €141 billion in fee-generating AUM and a broader base of committed and strategic capital. The Stockholm-based firm then completed its acquisition of secondaries specialist Coller Capital on 31 August 2026, a deal worth up to $3.7 billion in shares and contingent consideration, taking EQT's combined AUM to roughly €341 billion ($389 billion). Coller now operates as "Coller EQT," a dedicated secondaries business segment sitting alongside EQT's existing Private Capital and Real Assets divisions, with founder Jeremy Coller joining EQT's executive committee.
The logic behind the deal is straightforward: EQT management has said it expects the secondaries market to more than double by 2030, and buying an established, $50 billion platform is faster than building one organically.
CVC Capital Partners: building a global credit platform
CVC closed 2025 with €205 billion in AUM and €148 billion in fee-paying AUM, up from €200 billion and €147 billion respectively a year earlier, according to the firm's full-year results. In January 2026, CVC agreed to acquire US credit manager Marathon Asset Management for up to $1.6 billion, a deal that lifts CVC Credit's fee-paying AUM to roughly €61 billion by combining Marathon's asset-based, real estate and opportunistic credit strategies with CVC's existing European direct lending and CLO business, where it already ranks among the top three managers. CVC has said the combination supports its target of reaching €200 billion in fee-paying AUM across the group by 2028.
More than half of CVC's fee-paying AUM now sits outside its original private equity strategy, in Credit, Secondaries and Infrastructure — a shift the firm has been building for several years through both organic growth and targeted acquisitions.
Ardian: The employee-owned secondaries pioneer
Paris-based Ardian passed $200 billion in AUM in 2026, marking its 30th anniversary, with capital split roughly across private equity, real assets and credit alongside its long-standing secondaries franchise. Ardian remains majority-owned by its own employees, who hold around 40% of the firm following a 2013 buyout from former parent AXA; a 2026 shareholder restructuring saw AXA exit its remaining 10% stake in favour of existing investors Assurances du Crédit Mutuel and Wafra. The firm serves more than 1,920 clients worldwide and has increasingly built out a dedicated Private Wealth Solutions arm, now representing over 10% of its AUM – part of the same push toward retail and wealth channels visible across the industry, including through structures such as the ELTIF, covered in Franklin Templeton's recent CSSF-approved secondaries strategy for wealth investors.
Partners Group, ICG and Hg: scaling the mid-tier
Below the largest three, growth has been just as fast. Switzerland's Partners Group grew total AUM to $185 billion at the end of 2025, up from $152 billion a year earlier, after raising $30 billion in new client assets. London-listed ICG reported $124 billion in AUM as of 30 September 2025, up from $112.4 billion at its March 2025 year-end, for a five-year annualised growth rate of around 18%, driven in part by a new strategic partnership with Amundi to distribute private markets products to wealth investors.
Hg, the London-based technology and software specialist, reached $100 billion in AUM in 2025 on its 25th anniversary and now manages roughly $110 billion, according to the firm. Unlike its larger diversified peers, Hg has stayed focused on a single sector – software and technology services – rather than expanding into credit or infrastructure, betting that specialisation rather than platform breadth is its own form of scale.
Why Europe's largest buyout houses are becoming multi-strategy platforms
The EQT-Coller and CVC-Marathon deals are not isolated events. They reflect a structural shift already visible in the wider market: Invest Europe's 2025 activity report recorded €147 billion raised by European private equity and venture firms in 2025, up 16% and the second-best year on record, with dry powder near an all-time high at €434.8 billion against purchase multiples of roughly 12.8x. Capital is increasingly concentrating with a smaller group of large, diversified platforms rather than spreading evenly across the market, and deal count actually fell 8% even as fundraising rose – fewer, larger transactions with fewer, larger managers.
Three forces are driving the consolidation:
- Private wealth distribution requires scale, brand and semi-liquid product infrastructure that smaller, single-strategy managers struggle to build alone.
- Secondaries and credit have become core allocations for institutional investors seeking liquidity and income, not niche satellite strategies, making them attractive bolt-on acquisitions for buyout-heavy platforms.
- Fee-related earnings from diversified, recurring revenue streams are rewarded more highly by public shareholders than performance fees tied to a single buyout cycle, pushing listed managers such as EQT, CVC and ICG toward broader platforms.
What this means for fund selectors and allocators
For the fund selectors and private bankers evaluating exposure to these platforms, the practical implication is that "who manages the private equity fund" is no longer a clean question. A commitment to a CVC or EQT vehicle today may sit alongside credit and secondaries strategies acquired only months earlier, under leadership and processes still being integrated. Due diligence increasingly needs to assess platform-level scale, integration risk and revenue mix, not just the track record of the specific fund being raised – a shift that also explains why credit rating agencies have started rating diversified managers as corporate entities in their own right, alongside the individual funds.
That has two practical consequences worth weighing. On one hand, diversified platforms offer more resilient fee income and broader access to co-investment and secondary liquidity across strategies. On the other, a newly acquired business line – Coller's secondaries franchise inside EQT, or Marathon's US credit book inside CVC – has not yet been tested through a full cycle under its new ownership, and integration can dilute the specialist culture that built its original track record.
The bottom line
Europe's largest private equity firms in 2026 are best understood as private markets platforms rather than pure buyout shops: EQT, CVC and Ardian each now run private equity, credit, secondaries and real assets under one roof, and Partners Group, ICG and Hg are scaling fast enough to keep closing the gap. The AUM figures in the table above will keep moving as more deals like EQT-Coller and CVC-Marathon close, but the direction of travel is unlikely to reverse.
For allocators and fund selectors, that means the manager selection question is shifting from "which buyout fund" to "which platform" – and due diligence needs to follow that shift, weighing integration risk and revenue mix alongside the historical track record of any single strategy.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to invest in any fund or strategy managed by the firms discussed.
Data updated: 21 September 2026. Next scheduled update: Q1 2027, following full-year 2026 results from EQT, CVC, Ardian, Partners Group, ICG and Hg.
