The 2025–2026 Deal Cycle: Megadeals, a Record IPO and a Third-Quarter Pause

If you remember one thing about the current deal cycle, make it this: the number of transactions has fallen while their size has exploded. Boards and private equity funds are doing fewer deals and betting far more on each one. That pattern defined 2025 and carried into 2026.

2025: the year of the megadeal

According to LSEG data reported at the end of December 2025, global M&A reached about $4.5 trillion in 2025, the second-highest annual total on record after 2021. The count told a different story: deals fell 7%, to the lowest level since 2016. Size filled the gap. A record 68 transactions were worth $10 billion or more, and estimated investment banking fees rose 9% to $135 billion.

• Union Pacific's $88.2 billion purchase of Norfolk Southern, the largest deal of the year.
• The contest for Warner Bros Discovery, with a Paramount Skydance bid of $108 billion and a Netflix bid of $99 billion, both including debt.
• Kimberly-Clark's $50.6 billion purchase of Kenvue.
• A $55 billion leveraged buyout of Electronic Arts, the largest private equity deal of the year.

The cycle rewards scale. Fewer boards are doing deals, and those that do are swinging harder.

2026: a record half, then a pause

The first half of 2026 went further. LSEG counted $2.8 trillion of M&A in six months, up 48% and the highest year-to-date total since its records began in 1980, while the number of deals fell 9% to about 24,000. Forty-seven megadeals added up to more than $1.3 trillion, close to half of all volume. Among the largest was NextEra Energy's $66.8 billion merger with Dominion Energy.

Then momentum slowed. Mergermarket's nine-month tally, published on 1 October 2026, put global volume at $4.44 trillion across 32,419 deals, up 27%, with more than 72% booked in the first half. North American volume in the third quarter fell 23% year on year, to $560.4 billion. Technology remained the largest sector, at $1.1 trillion.

The IPO that reset the record

On 11 June 2026, SpaceX priced its Nasdaq listing at $135 a share and raised $75 billion, according to Renaissance Capital, almost three times the $25.6 billion Saudi Aramco raised in 2019. Ten banks ran the books, led by the same names that top the M&A tables.

How to read the numbers

• LSEG, Dealogic and Mergermarket count differently, so compare figures from the same provider.
• Value is concentrated: a handful of megadeals can move a whole year.
• Announced is not completed. Regulators and shareholders can still block or reshape a deal.
• Bank fees follow volume, which is why bank results track these cycles so closely.