BlackRock's, lowest performing global investment funds 2026, by NAV average return

BlackRock's, lowest performing global investment funds as of June 2026, by one year net asset value (NAV) average return

BlackRock is the worlds largest asset manager, but not all of its funds prospered in 2026. This report ranks BlackRock lowest-performing global investment funds as of June 2026 by one-year net asset value (NAV) average return, and the list is dominated by clean energy, long-term bonds, single-country markets and rate-sensitive sectors BlackRock itself ended 2025 with around 14 trillion dollars in assets after nearly 700 billion dollars of net inflows, so the weakness was concentrated in specific funds, not the firm as a whole.

The weakest performers were funds tied to clean energy, long-duration bonds, China and real estate, several of which lost money over the year. This is the mirror image of the firm top performers, set out in our fastest-growing BlackRock funds report and our leading BlackRock funds by NAV return analysis.

Deep in the red: the worst iShares funds by one-year NAV return were tied to clean energy, long-duration bonds, China and real estate, several posting outright losses while the broad market rose strongly.

These funds come from BlackRock iShares brand, the worlds largest family of exchange-traded funds. The firm overall scale and product range are set out in our BlackRock assets under management overview.

A note on the data. One-year NAV returns are approximate, drawn from fund and market data for the year to mid-2026. Exact figures vary by source and date, and returns change daily as markets move. The funds shown reflect the clear laggards of the period rather than a precise, audited ranking.

BlackRock Lowest-Performing Funds by NAV Return

The table lists BlackRock lowest-performing funds by one-year NAV return as of June 2026, along with each fund approximate size. It shows how the worst returns came from clean energy and certain single-country funds, while several large bond funds also lagged. Sorting any column reveals the pattern.

BlackRock Lowest-Performing Funds by Theme

By theme, BlackRock weakest funds in 2026 clustered around a few troubled areas: clean energy, long-duration bonds, single-country markets such as China and Mexico, real estate and high-growth stocks. Bond funds made up the largest single group This is a sharp contrast with the firm best performers, where gold, semiconductor and single-country funds soared; the same market that lifted those themes The funds that suffered most were those whose fortunes depend on cheap money or stable rates, exactly the conditions that vanished as central banks kept policy tight to fight inflation through 2025 and into 2026.

Clean energy funds were hit by high interest rates and weak solar economics, while long-term bond funds suffered as yields stayed elevated. Single-country and real estate funds added to the list, a spread of losers explored in our BlackRock AUM by asset class analysis.

Where the pain was: the laggards clustered around long-duration bonds, clean energy, single-country markets such as China and Mexico, real estate and growth. Rate-sensitive bond funds made up the largest single group.

This thematic mix reflects an unusual year. With interest rates high and inflation worries persistent, the laggards were rate-sensitive and structurally challenged sectors, In other words, the very forces that powered the winners, high rates, inflation fears and a flight to havens, were the same forces that punished the losers, especially rate-sensitive bonds Real estate and long bonds in particular move in the opposite direction to interest rates, so a year of stubbornly high yields was always likely to leave their funds among the weakest performers.

Big Funds Among the Laggards

A clear pattern emerges when returns are plotted against fund size: some of the worst returns came from small, niche funds, but several very large bond and growth funds also lagged, Long-term Treasury bond funds, in particular, are widely held for stability, so their weak year quietly hurt many conservative investors who expected them to cushion their portfolios rather than That quiet disappointment, a supposedly safe holding losing value, was one of the defining features of 2026 for cautious investors who leaned heavily on long-term bonds.

The small iShares Global Clean Energy ETF posted the steepest loss, but far larger funds such as long-term Treasury bond ETFs also trailed, showing that size offered no protection in a difficult year. This contrast is a recurring theme, as our largest ETFs by market cap coverage shows.

Size was no shield: each bubble is a fund, placed by its one-year return and size. The small clean energy fund posted the steepest loss, but several very large bond and growth funds also trailed, hurting investors who hold them as core positions.

The reason is that these funds are tied to specific, struggling parts of the market, whether clean energy, long bonds or a single foreign economy. When those areas fall, the funds fall with them, The iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF, one of the largest bond funds in the world, is a clear example: its size offered no shelter from the damage that rising long-term yields inflicted on its underlying holdings.

Laggards vs the Broad Market

Comparing each laggard with the broad market shows just how far the worst performers fell behind. While the broad iShares Core S&P 500 ETF returned around 32 percent over the year, The gap between a broad fund up around 32 percent and a clean energy fund down by double digits is enormous, amounting to a difference of 50 percentage points or more between Such a wide gap is unusual, and it underscores why looking only at a broad market average can be misleading; beneath a healthy headline number, individual sectors experienced wildly different fortunes.

Clean energy, China and long-bond funds trailed the broad market by enormous margins, in some cases by 40 percentage points or more. This kind of dispersion, where some funds soar and others sink, is common in volatile years, as our asset manager statistics overview notes.

Left far behind: the broad iShares Core S&P 500 ETF returned around 32 percent, but the weakest funds lost money or barely moved, trailing the market by 40 percentage points or more in the worst cases.

The gap is a stark reminder that averages hide a wide spread. In a year when the broad market rose strongly, holding the wrong sector, For investors who concentrated in a single weak theme, the year was painful, while those who held the broad market or the hot themes did very well, a reminder of This dispersion is precisely why diversification matters: an investor spread across many sectors would have captured the strong average, while one concentrated in a single weak theme bore The lesson of 2026 for fund holders is therefore an old but important one: spreading risk across sectors protects against exactly the kind of concentrated losses these laggard funds suffered.

Returns and Costs of the Weakest Funds

Pairing each fund return with its cost shows that the laggards were not always cheap. Several single-country and sector funds charged higher fees while delivering poor returns, Paying a premium fee for a fund that then loses money is the worst outcome for a fund holder, and several of the single-country and sector funds on this list delivered exactly that in the year to mid-2026.

The iShares Global Clean Energy ETF and single-country funds charge 0.40 to 0.60 percent, far more than broad index funds, yet they lost money over the year. Investors paid up for exposure that backfired, a trade-off explored across our largest ETF providers coverage.

Costly and disappointing: the bars show one-year return while the line shows the expense ratio. Several single-country and sector funds charged 0.40 to 0.60 percent yet lost money, a painful mix of high cost and weak performance.

This is the danger of narrow, thematic funds. They charge more than broad index funds and concentrate risk, so when their theme falls out of favour, The cheapest broad index funds, by contrast, charge a few hundredths of a percent and simply track the market, so even in a weak year their costs barely dent returns and they avoid It is a trade-off every investor faces: pay a little for broad, safe exposure, or pay more for a focused bet that might soar or, as these funds show, might just as easily sink.

Average NAV Return by Sector

Grouping the laggards by sector shows where the worst average returns came from. Clean energy posted by far the weakest average one-year return, followed by single-country equity funds and real estate.

Long-duration bond funds also lagged on average, weighed down by high interest rates, while even growth funds, strong in earlier years, barely moved. The pattern reflects how rate-sensitive and structurally weak sectors struggled, a dynamic that echoes our largest asset managers coverage of market trends.

Sector by sector: grouped by theme, clean energy posted by far the weakest average return, followed by single-country equity and real estate. Long-bond funds also lagged, while growth funds barely stayed positive.

Averaging by theme smooths out individual funds and shows the bigger picture: in 2026, the pain was concentrated in clean energy, long bonds and a few struggling foreign markets, This concentration of pain in a few sectors is typical of a divided market, where strong average index returns mask sharp losses in specific corners In 2026 those wrong conditions were high interest rates, persistent inflation and a rotation away from rate-sensitive and speculative sectors, all of which hit the funds on this list especially hard.

Clean Energy Versus the Market Over the Year

Clean energy was one of the worst stories of the year. Tracking the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF against the broad market over the past twelve months shows the fund falling further behind The divergence widened steadily through the year: as the broad market made new highs, the clean energy fund drifted lower, so the gap By the end of the period, an investor in the clean energy fund had lost money while one in the broad market had made a substantial gain, a divergence of around fifty percentage points over a single year, one of the widest gaps between any two corners of the market.

While the broad S&P 500 rose over the trailing year, clean energy funds were dragged down by high interest rates, weak solar and wind economics and waning policy support, deepening a multi-year slump. That divergence is the opposite of the gold story in our Vanguard assets under management coverage of market trends.

The wrong side of the trade: over the past year the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF fell further behind as the broad market climbed, dragged down by high rates and weak solar economics. The divergence is the mirror image of golds strong run.

The chart captures why a clean energy fund could anchor a list of laggards in a rising market. When rates are high and a sector faces structural headwinds, Clean energy is especially sensitive to interest rates because building solar and wind capacity requires heavy upfront borrowing, so higher rates directly raise costs and On top of that, the sector has faced waning policy support and intense competition, so even as electricity demand has grown, the listed clean energy companies in these funds have struggled to translate it into profits.

How Far Each Fund Fell Below Zero

Measured against the zero line, most of the leading laggards posted outright losses, with only a couple eking out small gains. The spread runs from a deep double-digit loss to a Even the least-bad funds on the list, the inflation-protected and growth funds clinging to small gains, badly trailed the broad market, so every single fund here disappointed relative to simply owning the broad index over the same period.

This split shows that even within a list of weak funds, the damage varied widely. Clean energy and China funds sat deep in the red, while inflation-protected bonds and growth funds clung to small positive returns, The deepest losses came from the most concentrated, rate-sensitive bets, while the funds that merely trailed tended to be broader or more defensive, The deeper a fund concentration in a single struggling theme, the further it tended to fall, while broader funds spread across many holdings cushioned the blow and stayed closer to the flat line.

Mostly red: measured against the zero line, most of the leading laggards posted outright losses, shown in red, while only a couple of bond and growth funds eked out small gains in green. The spread runs from a deep loss to a small gain.

For investors, the lesson is that weakness was concentrated. A handful of funds drove the worst losses, while others merely trailed the market, underlining how much depended on An investor who simply avoided clean energy, long bonds and a couple of struggling foreign markets would have sidestepped almost all of the worst returns, underlining how localised the damage was.

Lowest-Performing Funds by Size

Ranked by size rather than return, the picture shifts. Some of the worst-performing funds are small and niche, but the list also includes very large bond and growth funds that That is what makes a weak year for large bond funds quietly significant: it affects far more people than a small thematic fund ever could, A two percent loss on a 90 billion dollar fund represents far more lost value in dollar terms than an 18 percent loss on a fund holding only a billion or two, even though the This is why size and percentage return must be read together: a small percentage loss on a giant fund can quietly erase more wealth than a dramatic-looking loss on a tiny one.

This matters because a big fund lagging affects far more investors than a tiny niche fund. Large long-bond and growth funds trailing the market means widespread, if modest, underperformance, The iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF, for instance, holds around 90 billion dollars, so even a flat year for it touches Because such funds sit at the core of countless retirement accounts and model portfolios, even a modest shortfall ripples widely, affecting far more savers than the steep losses of any niche thematic fund, a point our asset management overview coverage underlines.

Large funds, weak year: ranked by assets, the list includes some very large bond and growth funds that millions hold as core positions, alongside the small, niche clean energy and single-country funds that fell hardest.

Size and short-term performance measure different things. The big bond funds hold most of the money because they offer stability and income, not high growth, so a weak year for them is Bond funds pay regular income that cushions price falls over time, so a weak year for them is usually recovered as older bonds mature and are This self-healing quality of bond funds is why a weak year, while unwelcome, rarely spells lasting damage for patient investors who hold them for income over the long term.

The Broad Market the Laggards Missed

Stepping back, the broad market had a solid year even as these funds struggled. Over the trailing twelve months the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF was up around 32 percent, That much of the gain came in late 2025, before the market turned flat to lower through 2026 itself, makes the laggards plight sharper still: they fell even as the headline index For the laggards, that timing was doubly unkind: they not only missed the late-2025 rally that lifted the broad market, but also fell during the flat, nervous stretch that followed in 2026.

That gap is the heart of the story: while the broad market rose, clean energy, long bonds and certain foreign markets fell or stalled. The swings behind the headline market are The divergence between a buoyant headline market and a handful of sinking sectors is the single most important context for understanding why these funds sit at the bottom of the table, a divide also seen across our biggest companies by value rankings.

What they missed: over twelve months the broad iShares Core S&P 500 ETF rose around 32 percent. The laggards almost entirely missed that gain, falling or stalling while the wider market climbed.

Against this backdrop of a rising broad market, the funds at the bottom of the list stand out all the more. Their weak returns came not from a falling market, but from being tied to For long-term investors, that distinction matters: a fund that falls because its whole sector is out of favour can recover when conditions change, unlike a fund that falls because of Clean energy and bond funds, for example, are tied to conditions that can change, so their poor year reflects the market environment rather than any flaw in how the funds are run.

BlackRock Lowest-Performing Funds: The Big Picture

Taken together, BlackRock lowest-performing funds by one-year NAV return tell a clear story: in a rising market, the losers were funds tied to clean energy, long-duration bonds, None of these were the giant, low-cost broad funds that hold most of BlackRocks money; instead, the laggards were concentrated bets on sectors that happened to face Each of these sectors faced its own specific headwind, from high rates for bonds and real estate to structural weakness for clean energy and policy uncertainty for single-country funds, and together they defined the bottom of the table.

These funds lagged badly, some losing money outright, because they were exposed to sectors hurt by high rates, weak economics or structural decline. The contrast with the soaring gold, chip and single-market winners could hardly be sharper.

For investors, the lesson is one of caution. Even within a giant, respected firm like BlackRock, individual funds can lag sharply when their corner of the market falls out of favour, The performance of any fund depends far more on what it holds than on who runs it, which is why even the worlds largest asset manager has funds at both That balance, with the same firm running both soaring winners and sinking laggards, is a reminder that a fund performance is driven by its underlying market, not by the reputation of the company behind it, however large or respected that company may be.

Taken together, the data shows that BlackRock weakest funds in June 2026 were defined by sector rather than by the firm itself. Clean energy, long-bond, single-country and real estate funds lagged the most, several The contrast captures a market that rewarded some bets handsomely while punishing others severely, all For BusinessStats readers, the value of this ranking is not as a list of funds to avoid forever, but as a clear map of which corners of the market struggled, and why, during one revealing year, and how sharply fortunes can differ even within the lineup of the worlds largest asset manager.

Whether the measure is the worst fund or the broad index, the same message holds: 2026 punished rate-sensitive and structurally weak sectors while rewarding narrow, hot themes. As always, past performance is no guide to the future, and todays laggards could just as easily lead in a different year.

Frequently Asked Questions: BlackRock Lowest-Performing Funds