When private equity starts moving quietly, it is usually worth paying attention. The Deloitte luxury report 2026 has one of those moments buried inside it.
Deloitte published its Global Fashion and Luxury Private Equity Survey today, drawing on around 50 PE representatives and 119 companies generating approximately $941 billion in revenue in 2025. The Deloitte luxury report 2026 is the clearest map available of where the smart money in luxury is going next. The Deloitte luxury report 2026 destination is away from the handbag and toward the hotel room, away from the object and toward the experience, away from the category that spent three years raising prices and lost 60 million customers in the process, and toward the one where 71 percent of companies are growing.
49 percent versus 71 percent and everything that gap means
Federico Bazzani, Partner at Deloitte Advisory, put the divide in a single sentence: in personal luxury goods, only 49 percent of companies are recording growth. In experiential segments, that share rises to 71 percent.
Read that again slowly.
Same market. Same consumers. Same economic conditions. One category growing at 71 percent of its companies. The other at 49 percent. The gap between those two numbers is the most commercially significant signal in luxury investment right now, and it is driving every acquisition conversation happening in the sector today.
An investor sitting across the table from a fashion brand with pricing pressure and a contracting customer base is simultaneously being pitched by a hospitality group whose consumers are choosing experiences over objects with a conviction that the data has been confirming for three consecutive years. The hospitality pitch is winning. The Deloitte luxury report 2026 confirms it with the precision that PE funds require before they move capital.
The handbag is losing its investment thesis and the hotel room is gaining one
Deal activity in luxury rose 3.6 percent in 2025 to 345 transactions. In the first half of 2026 it contracted 6.2 percent. In personal luxury goods specifically, M&A fell 19.7 percent in the same period.
The gap between those two figures tells the story more honestly than any industry commentary. Investors are pulling back from physical luxury goods at nearly three times the rate they are pulling back from luxury overall. The handbag sector is losing investment confidence. The hotel sector is gaining it.
The revenue picture is equally specific. Fashion and luxury revenues rose 0.6 percent in H1 2026, against a 12.4 percent decline in H1 2025. The brands announcing a recovery are technically accurate. What they are recovering against is a year of historic contraction, and 0.6 percent growth against that base is, in commercial terms, standing still.
The consumer story underneath the revenue story is the one that explains everything. Active luxury consumers stood at 330 million in 2025, down 20 million from 2024 and 15 percent below the 2022 peak. Sixty million people stepped away from luxury in three years. More than 70 percent say they intend to return. The PE funds still committed to the sector are betting on that return. The ones rotating toward experiential luxury are betting it will arrive in hotel lobbies before it arrives in boutiques.
Why 75 percent of PE funds still want luxury despite everything
None of this has driven private equity away from luxury. It has made private equity considerably more specific about which luxury it wants.
Elio Milantoni, Senior M&A Partner at Deloitte Advisory, was direct: “The fashion and luxury sector continues to prove highly attractive to investors, with 75% of private equity funds intending to invest in the sector in 2026, confirming renewed investor interest and confidence.”
The Deloitte luxury report 2026 confirms that confidence is conditional rather than unconditional. The funds entering the market now are looking for businesses with revenues between $50 million and $250 million, which accounted for 42 percent of transactions in 2025, at valuation multiples between 5x and 15x EV/EBITDA. Large enough to scale. Small enough to reshape. The average transaction value in personal luxury goods was $297 million, which is the price of a brand with genuine heritage and genuine problems, the precise combination that experienced PE funds are built to resolve.
One shift in the Deloitte luxury report 2026 deserves particular attention. Minority stakes are growing in appetite, up 9 percentage points from 2025. For decades, PE has preferred control. The growing openness to minority positions signals that the most attractive luxury businesses in 2026 are often founder-led or family-controlled, the kind of businesses that have historically closed their doors to outside capital. The door is opening. The Deloitte data suggests the smartest capital is walking through it.
Deloitte luxury report 2026: The two things PE funds are checking
The Deloitte luxury report 2026 contains a section on AI and resale that most luxury brands will read as forward-looking. The PE funds using it for due diligence are reading it as present tense.
Half of luxury consumers now use AI somewhere in their purchase journey. One in four uses it to discover products. Two in three use it to compare them. They trust AI at roughly twice the level they trust social media. Meanwhile, 60 percent of luxury brands remain at an early stage of AI adoption.
For a PE investor, that gap is a transaction variable. A brand with weak data infrastructure and early AI adoption requires more capital to bring up to speed and carries more execution risk than one that has already built the systems its consumers are using to find and evaluate it. The brands that have closed the gap are more attractive. The ones that have widened it are repriced accordingly.
The resale data in the Deloitte luxury report 2026 lands in the same place as The Pillar Edit’s own resale intelligence piece published three weeks ago: 47 percent of luxury consumers now evaluate resale value before making a primary market purchase, and the second-hand market is expected to grow two to three times faster than primary luxury through 2027. Deloitte describes this as a structural transformation in how consumers think about luxury and value. For PE funds, it is simpler than that. A brand whose products hold value on the secondary market is a better business than one whose products do not. Resale performance is now a due diligence number.
Three things every luxury brand needs to act on before the next acquisition cycle
Three things follow from the Deloitte luxury report 2026 for every luxury brand paying attention.
The first is the most urgent. The 22 percentage point gap between experiential luxury growth participation and personal luxury goods growth participation is a valuation signal, and it is already in the market. Fashion brands with hospitality extensions, travel programmes or experiential dimensions are being valued differently from those without them. The brands that have been treating those extensions as marketing initiatives should start treating them as commercial architecture.
The second is about AI, and the window for acting on it is shorter than most brands have calculated. Consumers trust AI at twice the level of social media. Sixty percent of luxury brands are at an early stage of adoption. The ones that close that gap in the next twelve months will be more attractive acquisition targets in the next cycle. The ones that remain at early stage will face a valuation discount that compounds every quarter they delay.
The third is about resale, and it is the one most brands are still treating as someone else’s story. Deloitte calls the shift in consumer resale behaviour a structural transformation. PE funds are using resale performance as a due diligence metric. A brand whose products hold value on the secondary market is a better business than one whose products do not. That is the sentence that should be in every luxury brand board presentation for the next two years.
The Deloitte luxury report 2026 data was published this morning. The capital has been moving for months. The brands that read this carefully are the ones that will understand why before everyone else does.
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(Image credit: aman/Instagram)
FAQ
What does the Deloitte luxury private equity report 2026 say?
Deloitte’s Global Fashion and Luxury Private Equity and Investors Survey 2026, published October 6 2026, draws on responses from around 50 private equity representatives and 119 companies generating approximately $941 billion in revenue in 2025. Key findings include: 75% of PE funds still intend to invest in luxury in 2026; fashion and luxury revenues rose only 0.6% in H1 2026 versus a 12.4% decline in H1 2025; luxury M&A fell 6.2% in H1 2026 with personal luxury goods down 19.7%; only 49% of personal luxury goods companies are recording growth versus 71% of experiential luxury businesses; and active luxury consumers fell to 330 million in 2025, 15% below 2022 levels.
Why is private equity moving from fashion to hospitality in luxury?
The shift reflects a fundamental divergence in growth rates between physical luxury goods and experiential luxury categories. Deloitte confirms that only 49% of personal luxury goods companies are recording growth in 2026 while 71% of experiential luxury businesses are growing. A premium fashion brand facing pricing pressure and a shrinking consumer base is less attractive to PE than a hospitality, yachting or travel business benefiting from affluent consumers’ demonstrated preference for experiences over objects. The shift is reinforced by the collapse in personal luxury goods M&A, which fell 19.7% in H1 2026 versus an overall luxury M&A decline of only 6.2%.
What does the Deloitte report say about luxury resale?
Deloitte expects the second-hand luxury market to grow two to three times faster than new luxury goods between 2025 and 2027, particularly in watches, jewellery and leather goods. Around half of luxury shoppers now check the second-hand market before buying new, and online searches for vintage handbags more than doubled in a year. Deloitte describes this as “a structural transformation in the way consumers think about luxury and value,” and notes that residual value, authentication capability and product durability are becoming useful indicators of brand quality in PE due diligence, making resale performance a commercial asset that luxury brands need to manage deliberately.
