Private equity italiano: sfide e opportunità per il 2026

Italy's private equity market experienced a mixed performance trajectory in 2025, with significant capital deployment offset by pronounced fundraising headwinds. According to a KPMG report prepared for AIFI (Associazione Italiana del Private Equity, Venture Capital), the market registered €11.6 billion in investments during the year, but fundraising collapsed by 46% to €3.57 billion. This divergence reflects operators' reliance on existing dry powder and a challenging capital-raising environment, even as deployment activity remained robust. The mid-market segment emerged as a bright spot, reaching a historic high of €6.456 billion, suggesting that smaller-to-mid-sized acquisition opportunities continue to attract investor capital despite macro uncertainty.

Transaction volume expanded numerically to 887 completed deals in 2025, underscoring sustained M&A activity across the Italian market despite tighter financial conditions. This metric suggests that deal flow remains healthy and that operators are executing transactions efficiently with available capital, though the average deal size and leverage multiples may reflect more conservative underwriting standards. The concentration of activity in mid-market deals indicates that lower complexity, mid-sized acquisitions with strong sponsor-operator alignment are outperforming larger, more capital-intensive transactions.

Private debt has emerged as a meaningful alternative, with investments rising 33% to €6.8 billion in 2025, though fundraising for this segment also declined 26% to €1 billion. This growth trajectory indicates portfolio managers and sponsors are increasingly employing direct lending and structured credit alongside traditional PE, diversifying their value-creation levers and reducing reliance on leverage from public credit markets. The private debt expansion reflects broader institutional investor shift toward alternative credit in a period of compressed spreads and regulatory capital scrutiny on traditional banking channels.

Forward-looking sentiment for 2026 remains constructive, with Deloitte's Private Equity Confidence Survey reporting that 86% of investors surveyed in the first half of 2026 anticipate either stable or improving economic conditions. However, the market structure is transitioning fundamentally: capital is concentrating among larger funds with institutional relationships, growth expectations are moderating relative to prior boom cycles, and operators face pressure to harvest value from existing portfolios rather than chase aggressive buyout expansion. Successful Italian PE players in 2026 will require disciplined portfolio management, focus on operational improvements and organic growth rather than financial engineering, and strategic positioning for secondary distributions and continuation vehicles as limited partners reassess capital allocation.