The first European commercial mortgage-backed securitisation of 2026 has launched, building on a resurgent market in 2025.
The £375 million Sirius Logistics 2026-1 UK DAC is collateralised by a portfolio of logistics in the UK owned by the Blackstone-affiliated Mileway platform.
It securitises an £804 million loan provided by Bank of America, Standard Chartered and Wells Fargo to finance 126 properties at a 60% loan to value. That refinanced three loans originated by BoA in 2021. Moody's is acting as ratings analyst.
The CMBS is expected to be priced this week. It comes as a filing has been lodged for another European CMBS transaction, the AESIR (European Loan Conduit NO.41), an Irish real estate transaction focused on 22 properties.
New European CMBS issuance soared in 2025 to €8.7 billion in 17 transactions across multiple sectors, against €2.2 billion in five transactions the previous year, to chalk up the highest annual volume by a distance for more than a decade.
Ratings analyst Scope said it expects the momentum to continue in 2026, driven by the "growing role of private credit in commercial real estate financing alongside sustained demand for securitisation as an alternative to bank lending".
Morningstar DBRS said it expects 2026 to show similar numbers.
"We expect between 15 and 20 securitisations for approximately €9 billion to €10 billion. Once again, I&L collateral is likely to be the most common asset type securing European CMBS issuances, but we also expect multifamily, office, and retail properties to find their way into the CMBS market in 2026. In addition, we would not be surprised to see less traditional CRE included in future transactions, such as the 39 holiday parks in Caister Finance DAC last year.
"Last year was also pivotal because several sponsors re-entered the CMBS market for their financing needs. For example, The Carlyle Group, Starwood Capital Group, and GoldenTree Asset Management decided, for the first time since the GFC, to issue CMBS to fund their European CRE investments. Blackstone has remained the biggest sponsor of European CMBS in recent years, but the additional sponsors have improved diversity, which may help to consolidate CMBS' position as a reliable source of funding for the European CRE market."
In its separate report, Scope says the surge of new supply in 2025 reflected improved investor confidence, supported by stable collateral performance and a more favourable funding environment as interest rates began to normalise. In addition, Scope believes refinancing risk for existing securitised loans appears limited to the office sector. Nevertheless, it expects a quarter of all office loans, by number, will face high or very high refinancing risk.
New CMBS issuance was close to 75% higher than the previous three years combined, Scope says. That new financing "more than offset" the 17 loans prepaid or repaid in 2025 – six backed by industrial properties, six retail, two telecom exchanges, two residential and one office. The second largest volume this decade was in 2019, when just over €6 billion transacted as the market began to recover from the global financial recession, while in 2021 just under €6 billion transacted.
Pricing also became increasingly competitive, with weighted average note margins reaching recent lows of +1.72% and +1.79% in the UK and Europe, respectively, for the latest transactions.