The iConnections Global Allocator Report 2026, produced in partnership with J.P. Morgan Asset Management, sits on a unique vantage point. It captures three layers of allocator behavior in the same dataset: what LPs say they want, where they actually spend time, and how they expect to allocate over the next twelve months. No single industry dataset reads all three at once. That is why the report’s findings carry unusual weight for a 2026 fundraising or allocation cycle.

This is the field summary. Seven findings, the ones most relevant to a fund manager building a raise or an allocator building a 2026 portfolio.

Finding 1: Alternatives Allocation Is Still Expanding

Roughly 67% of surveyed LPs intend to increase their alternatives allocation in 2026. Another 26% expect to keep allocation flat. Combined 93% maintaining or increasing exposure. That is the headline number for anyone debating whether alts demand has peaked. It has not. However, what has changed is the discipline allocators are applying to where the new dollars land. The rest of the report unpacks that.

Finding 2: Capital Recycling, Not Capital Retreat

Approximately 74% of allocators reported making at least one redemption in 2025. Nearly 19% made four or more. The redemptions skewed to public markets, around 46%, with roughly 23% from private markets. Paired with the 67% planning to increase alts in 2026, the right read is recycling, not retreat. Allocators are pruning low-conviction positions to redeploy into higher-conviction strategies. That is not the same market behavior as a contraction, and it should not be marketed as one.

Finding 3: Liquidity and Macro Are the Top Portfolio Concerns

When asked about the biggest portfolio challenge today, roughly 26% of allocators cited global macro risk. Approximately 25% cited insufficient liquidity. Tail risk (17%) and challenged performance (14%) followed. As a result, allocators are gravitating toward strategies that can adapt to volatility and preserve flexibility — a pattern that shows up most clearly in the liquid hedge fund cluster.

Finding 4: The Allocator Demand Hierarchy

The report introduces a four-tier framework for reading allocator interest, which is the most citable single artifact in the document.

  • Tier 1, high interest, low rejection: Long/Short Equity, Multi-Strategy, Event Driven, Global Macro, Relative Value, Liquid Credit.
  • The next tier is core but increasingly selective: Private Equity, Private Credit, Real Estate, Real Assets and Infrastructure.
  • A third group is polarizing (high interest paired with high rejection): Venture Capital being the clearest case, along with Long Only Equity and Managed Futures.
  • The remaining tier is targeted niche: Specialty Finance, Volatility, Options Trading, Alternative Risk Premia, plus the structurally under-demanded set of Digital Assets, Insurance-Linked Securities, and SPACs.

That hierarchy is the right way to read 2026 manager-side competition. It should anchor any GP positioning work.

Finding 5: Private Markets Are Crowded, Not Cooling

Private Equity, Private Credit, Real Estate, and Real Assets all show the same pattern in the meeting data on our platform. Manager supply grew faster than allocator engagement. Average meetings per fund fell. Relative meeting demand softened. Allocator dollars are still going to private markets. As a result, the bar for which manager gets the dollars went up.

Finding 6: Discovery Is 80% Network-Driven

Roughly 80% of LPs report discovering new managers through their professional networks. Over half cite conferences and industry events as a primary sourcing channel. That is the data point that should reshape any 2026 fundraising calendar still organized around outbound to a static prospect list. In other words, the cold channel is not the channel allocators are using. The peer-allocator network and the in-person event floor are. Both are surfaces the iConnections platform is built to feed.

Finding 7: North America Is Where the Capital Is Going

Approximately 86% of allocators expect to allocate capital to the United States and North America in the next twelve to eighteen months. Europe follows at 56% while Japan trails at 30%. The geographic skew matters for managers building target lists and for allocators planning regional manager outreach. The North America concentration is the cleanest macro signal in the report.

What This Means in Practice

The combined picture is not difficult to read. Allocators are still expanding alternatives exposure, but doing it by recycling capital rather than adding gross. At the same time, they’re concentrating attention in a smaller, more disciplined set of strategies. They are sourcing through the peer network and the in-person event floor rather than the database. A fund manager building a 2026 raise against any other premise is fighting the data.

For a deeper look at the discovery channel finding, see “How Institutional Investors Find New Fund Managers in 2026“. For the relationship-mechanics layer of the same finding, see “How LP-GP Relationships Actually Get Built in Alternative Investments“. For the in-event mechanics that produce the 50% of allocator-initiated meetings on our platform the report references, see Global Alts Miami event page and Global Alts New York event page.