This blog is a summary of IPEM's first community webinar of the year, hosted in partnership with iCapital.
In the recent webinar Every Shade of Evergreen: An Outlook for 2026 we asked a panel of experts to share their views about where the market is heading this year.
According to data presented by Justina Deveikyte of Novantigo, non-ELTIF evergreen funds reached €85 billion by Q3 2025, representing 112% annual growth. Even more striking, open-ended ELTIFs grew by 156% year-over-year compared to just 28% for closed-ended structures.
Daniel Imhof, Head of Client Solutions EMEA at iCapital, put the global picture in perspective:
"Globally, 72% of all flows on the iCapital platform is now open-ended structures, which is massive. And if I look at EMEA, it's even more than 90%."
Off the back of this record-breaking year, we gathered a panel of distribution experts to set the tone for what comes next.
Here are five trends we thought were interesting:
1. Infrastructure Is the Breakout Star
Private equity still leads in absolute flows, but infrastructure is stealing the show in terms of growth trajectory.
Imhof revealed: "Two years ago on our platform, 80% [of real asset fund flows] was real estate, 20% was infra. And now it's almost 50/50."
William Vettorato from EQT explained the opportunity:
"Infrastructure today is attractive because it's facing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to modernise existing infrastructure and develop the infrastructure of the future—data centres, clean energy transition, power generation."
2. Scale Is Now a Requirement, Not a Nice-to-Have
Michiel Elshof, Head of Private Markets at ING, emphasised operational capability as the new differentiator:
"Managing evergreen funds at scale is a hard thing to do. We look for managers with the deal flow and the warehousing capability which allows them to deploy capital efficiently and to manage liquidity properly."
With hundreds of evergreen funds now in market, having a strong track record isn't enough. Managers need the operational infrastructure to handle quarterly liquidity, continuous deployment, and balanced distribution.
3. Distributors favour quality over quantity
Rather than building massive platforms, leading private banks are taking a quality-over-quantity approach. Oyvin Furustol from LGT explained their philosophy:
"Our goal is not to offer a platform where clients can access more than twenty funds, but really it's the curated shelf approach. We like to focus on fewer funds that would then get more assets over time."
LGT offers just 6 evergreen funds in Europe, whilst ING offers just 10.
Elshof of ING is expecting an imbalance between supply and demand is on the horizon:
"Pretty quickly there will be more funds than shelf space available at distributors. We're not there yet, but it's getting busy already."
This trend is raising the barriers to entry for newer entrants and makes winning new distribution partnerships highly competitive.
As Marco Cerasino from UniCredit shares:
"We analyse the DNA of each asset manager. For us it's important they have verticalisation, the expert capability that the asset manager has in their strategies. The brand is important, as well as track record and deal attribution."
4. Explosive Growth Can Backfire
In one of the session's most thought-provoking moments, Vettorato highlighted a risk for evergreen managers in a buoyant fundraising market. He noted that uneven fundraising creates vintage concentration in the investor base:
If you fundraise in two billion in year 1 and nothing for the remaining three years, after five years, your investor population will be materially skewed. What will matter for a big portion of your investor base will be that specific point-to-point performance."
The implication is investors which enter the fund around the same time tend to react similarly when performance, whether good or bad.
When performance is strong, investors can seek redemptions to crystallise gains just as much as looking to bail out when performance is weak.
Evergreen managers must calibrate steady and organic growth to smooth out the risks of lumpy fundraising peaks.
5. Model Portfolios Are the Next Frontier
As evergreen shelves mature, the focus is shifting to packaging strategies into goal-based solutions. Imhof noted:
"Model portfolios are really emerging as a key evolution in the European wealth space. Banks are positioning models as goal-based solutions. For example, the client says they want to have 10% yield, create me a model that is diversified."
However, full integration into discretionary portfolio management remains complex. "Everyone wants to get evergreen solutions into discretionary portfolio management," Imhof acknowledged, "but this is a very complex task."
The challenges of fiduciary duty, liquidity mismatches, and operational complexities are likely to be a feature for the year ahead.
Thanks to all the speakers for sharing their views and those of you who joined us online. You can watch the on-demand replay here.
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