From Gymshark to Monzo: UK IPOs in 2026

Corporate paralegal Thomas Martin examines the prospects for new flotations on the London stock market in the year ahead

Compared to its American counterparts across the pond, the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, London’s Stock Exchange has long looked like the less glamorous sibling. Until late 2025, the UK IPO market was widely described as being in a “deep freeze”, struggling to compete with the allure of US listings. Since then, London has staged something of a comeback, but the question is whether it has legs.

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon stated, “it’s not fun being a public company… who would want to be a public company?”, but it turns out, despite the mood-dampening environment at the time of writing, the public listing outlook looks optimistic.

As you can probably assume from the title of this article, for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, London has the wind in its sails, and is fighting back, with a flurry of IPO activity in Q4 2025 setting up 2026 for an even stronger year.

£2.1bn was raised in 2025 after 23 companies listed on the LSE, a “170% increase in proceeds compared to 2024“. This is a significant rebound, if tepid relative to other countries. Shawbrook Bank and Princes Group (the tinned tuna brand) floated on the LSE last year and this build-up of momentum has been coupled with important regulatory reforms.

Firstly, the UK Listing Relief was announced, a new, three-year exemption from the 0.5% Stamp Duty Reserve Tax on share transfers for listing post-November 2025. This was widely reported and is likely to boost London’s competitiveness for IPOs. Secondly, a further recent reform relates to the FTSE UK index methodology. Two notable changes were introduced: first, removal of the Sterling-denominated price requirement, allowing companies whose shares trade in non-GBP currencies to be included in FTSE indices; and second, adjustments to the Fast Entry thresholds, lowering the market-capitalisation thresholds required for companies to enter (or exit) the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 more quickly.

These reforms were a good sign to be optimistic for London’s IPO market. However, at the time of writing — and unless you have been living under a rock — it would be fair to say the geopolitical turbulence of Q1 2026 may have dampened this optimism. Even today alone, for an example of the uncertainty created by the combined military conflicts across South America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe is seen with oil prices soaring to over $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022; the largest single-day spike in six years.

Such volatility is not a desirable, plannable economic environment for multinational firms. 78% of UK CEOs have altered their investment plans for the next 12 months (over geopolitical risks), but interestingly 9/10 UK CEOs are confident for the next 12 month outlook. In the same EY-Parthenon CEO Outlook Survey, 99% of CEOs are looking to “pursue a transaction initiative” over the next 2 months, 54% were looking at M&A, and 16% were looking at IPOs. If the volatility can still be weathered by some, depending on sector, the reasonable next question is this: is there (still) a queue of high-quality companies poised to list on the LSE? Will they still go ahead this year?

Many prospective listings are household names. In the fintech industry, Monzo, a UK-based digital bank with 11 million retail and 600,000 business clients, is tipped for a ~£6bn float, and would be London’s flagship listing of this year. Despite rumoured talks with Morgan Stanley, however, no date has been confirmed. Equally, another UK-based digital bank, Revolut, is looking for an IPO, and is notably backed by Nvidia’s venture capital arm ‘NVentures’ (this may be a dual-listing with the Nasdaq, however). A third player, Starling, having recently restructured, is likely looking to float in the coming year(s).

Further, Loveholidays, an online travel agency, was expected to be the LSE’s first major IPO of the year, but the £1bn listing was delayed due to the Middle East conflict. Another major delay – and perhaps the most significant for the LSE — is with Visma, a Norwegian payroll software firm who chose London over Amsterdam, but who are likely to delay its £16.5bn float (however, this is largely due to software stocks selling off over AI fears).

Despite these setbacks, there are still further potential 2026 listings for London to examine. Two favourites of mine — bookstore Waterstones and online activewear retailer Gymshark — met with Chancellor Rachel Reeves recently to explore an IPO. These would be major publicity wins for the LSE, being such household names. The UK’s largest breakdown recovery service, the RAC, may also list publicly, at around £5bn.

Other rumoured UK IPO candidates include Huel, Gousto and Boots — the latter shelved plans for a £7bn float in June 2024 — though declining valuations and wavering investor confidence have kept all three on the sidelines. Structural problems, meanwhile, continue to dog London regardless of the reforms already undertaken.

Foreign acquisitions of UK firms “rose to a four-year high of £65 billion last year“, something even I have experience in, when I assisted (in a very small way) in the ‘sale of a majority stake in Green Label Holdings Ltd, the company behind the renowned Gressingham brand, to LDC International SAS’. Acquisitions of UK firms from overseas may trigger a “hollowing out” effect, whereby the overall market capitalisation of the index is reduced, and UK firms look ‘cheap’ due to a weak pound, the reduced liquidity of the overall UK market, and low valuations on the LSE. Connected to this, there are also fears the UK has become an ‘incubator economy’, whereby innovative firms in the UK look to be sold abroad rather than scaling in the UK.

In fact, 53 of the FTSE 250 have been majority-acquired over the past 5 years: ‘26 by private equity, 15 by overseas corporations, and 12 consolidated by UK companies’. Notable examples include Deliveroo exiting the LSE after it was acquired by DoorDash in the US for £2.9bn, and Just Group being bought off the LSE by Brookfield Wealth Solutions in Canada. Even within the FTSE 100, Flutter Entertainment and Sunbelt Rentals Holdings Inc are “in the process of switching their primary listings to the US“. Last year, 91% of shareholders of fintech group Wise voted to drop London in favour of the NYSE.

Even if we disregard the above, or see a decrease in UK firm acquisitions this year, the biggest and most lucrative listings are still likely to occur on American exchanges. SpaceX (valued at $1.5trn) OpenAI (valued at $1trn), and Anthropic (valued at $380bn), would be record-breaking ‘hectocorn’ IPOs, which dwarf the London-based offerings. Further, the US is likely to receive pitches from a plethora of companies as their first choice of exchange, including Databricks, Discord, Stripe, Canva, and Medline. To note, Shein explored listing in the US and UK, but regulatory issues have meant the firm has privately filed for an IPO on Hong Kong’s ‘Hang Seng’.

Consequently, are we seeing a situation as outlined by Cyrus Kapadia — the head of Lazard’s investment banking arm in the UK — who stated the fashion for UK companies to seek US listings was fading, as companies with a market value of ‘three, four, or five billion would not get the attention of investors in the US’?

Perhaps, then, 2026 may not produce trillion-dollar tech listings, but a strong pipeline of mid-market IPOs which could be vital for rebuilding London’s public markets.

Throughout writing my article there has been a common theme: there is no certainty around upcoming flotations. London has many suitors, but none want to take the plunge — and for good reason. The global economy is just too volatile to commit. However, if a few of these listings go well, they could act as a catalyst for kickstarting London’s IPO market in the years ahead. But, if the uncertainty continues, so will the malaise, and any thought of thawing London from its deep freeze.

Thomas Martin is a Corporate M&A Paralegal at Birketts LLP.