What are the questions that matter for 2026?
As part of our Global Credit Outlook 2026, S&P Global Ratings answers the questions that will shape the year—including those addressing geopolitics and trade; refinancing and rates; and private credit—collected through our interactions with investors and other market participants.
What We’re Watching:
Entering 2026, there has been no shortage of voices warning of an impending credit downturn. Yet several factors point to a more balanced picture ahead—including resilient economies, pushed-out maturities for many issuers, and declining interest rates.
Meanwhile, U.S. policy uncertainty (particularly around tariffs) continues to color the global economic landscape. Continuing trade tensions come amid an evolution of the world order more generally. As the Trump administration continues to redefine the U.S.’s role in the world order, global and regional alliances are becoming more pragmatic rather than based on shared principles. This comes as the U.S. is seemingly less willing to bear the cost of policing the world at large but quicker to intervene to promote its own interests closer to home at the risk of increased geopolitical destabilization.
More broadly, accelerating structural trends—whether geopolitical, demographic, environmental, or technological—are increasingly obfuscating the messages from more-traditional cyclical factors.
What We Think And Why:
The sustained period of resilient global credit conditions looks set to continue in 2026, but this outlook is not uniform. Performance across sectors and geographies will diverge, and the evolving geopolitical order may continue to introduce unexpected policy shifts.
Broader policy uncertainty represents a key risk to our credit outlook and could trigger market volatility. Trade tensions seem to have peaked, but they are symptomatic of a long-term shift toward a more transactional and multipolar world order which will have longer-term credit implications.
We believe performance across sectors and geographies will diverge, and the evolving geopolitical order may continue to introduce unexpected policy shifts. And as assumptions about AI’s transformative power increasingly drive market valuations and investment volumes, creating a boom in data center construction and adding to economic growth, these outlays may lead to over-investment and pain later for credit conditions.
Against this backdrop, we believe these are the 10 Questions That Matter for 2026:
Markets have so far absorbed geopolitical event risks, including armed conflicts, as economies and corporations adapt; but S&P Global Ratings expects the structural changes from the ongoing global reshuffling will have enduring credit implications.
After two years of favorable financing conditions, it's unlikely that material declines in rates or substantially stronger demand for debt lie ahead. Vulnerabilities are building at a time when markets are preparing to reduce risk.
Increased isolationism—largely driven by the U.S.—is shaking the foundations of global trade. Policy uncertainty will likely persist, forcing governments and businesses to strengthen supply-chain resilience even at some cost to efficiency.
We expect U.S. private consumption growth to hit a cycle low in 2026 amid weaker real disposable incomes and broader structural headwinds, and for consumption growth to remain soft in China, weighing on overall growth.
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Corporates are already adjusting to higher refinancing costs, but unexpected increases could pose challenges for companies at the lower end of the rating scale. Sovereigns appear more resilient to potential significant shocks in financial markets.
Hyperscalers are placing massive bets on AI ambitions, as data center demand surges against a backdrop of rising but constrained supply, keeping sector fundamentals healthy. Still, risks for owners, operators, and investors vary across types of facilities and financing sources.
With the investor base expanding, rapid innovation in fund finance is blurring the line between funds and securitizations. We expect this will give way to an eventual standardization of fund structures.
Emerging Markets (EMs) are set to remain a key driver of global growth in 2026, while capital flows into the region should remain positive. Greater self-reliance and diversification are making EMs more resilient, but lower-rated entities and frontier markets will likely be more vulnerable to potential shifts in external conditions.
Growing recognition that global warming will surpass 1.5 degrees Celsius is driving increased focus on adaptation and resilience investments to address unavoidable impacts.
Tokenization of traditional U.S. financial instruments should accelerate the growth of regulated U.S. dollar stablecoins. This will further establish stablecoin reserves as key marginal buyers of short-term U.S. Treasuries, potentially affecting market volatility and federal government debt management strategies.
What Could Change:
The main dynamic risks that could derail our baseline expectations include the possibility that persistent trade uncertainties weigh on earnings and economic growth, the potential for a market correction that could expose new vulnerabilities, and the chance that weaker domestic conditions lead to a sharp global economic slowdown and affect credit.
Looking ahead at the structural risks that will shape the future of credit, geopolitical tensions could threaten supply chains and commodities markets, tech disruption will be uneven across countries and sectors, and climate-related risks will almost certainly intensify.
CreditWeek, Edition 99
Contributors: Alex Birry
Written by: Joe Maguire and Molly Mintz