Value of the international debt capital market deals Q1 2026

Value of deals on the international debt capital markets from the first quarter of 2017 to the first quarter of 2026

The value of deals on the international debt capital markets has run near 1.5 trillion dollars a quarter since 2017, reaching a record of about 1.8 trillion dollars in the first quarter of 2026. This is the market where governments and companies raise money by issuing bonds. A debt capital market deal is essentially a loan packaged as a tradable security, allowing an issuer to borrow from many investors at once, which is why the total value of these deals is one of the broadest measures of how much the world is borrowing through the bond market. The deals span everything from government bonds and bank debt to corporate bonds and asset-backed securities, but they share a common feature, namely that the issuer borrows a large sum from investors in the public markets rather than from a single bank.

Issuance is highly seasonal, with the first quarter always the busiest, and it has swung with the economy, spiking in the 2020 pandemic and falling in the 2022 rate shock. The series sits alongside our MSCI World index overview and our global financial markets coverage.

Seasonal and rate-driven: international debt capital market deal value has run near 1.5 trillion dollars a quarter since 2017, spiking to 1.9 trillion in the 2020 pandemic and reaching a record 1.8 trillion in the first quarter of 2026.

Debt capital markets are central to how the world borrows, and the deals are arranged by the same banks that dominate global finance, a business our leading investment banks and central banks overviews explore.

A note on the data. The figures show the approximate value of international debt capital market deals by quarter, based on LSEG and market data, in trillions of dollars. Quarterly values are estimates. The international debt capital market is only one part of the wider bond universe, sitting alongside the much larger pool of domestic issuance, but it is a closely watched gauge because it captures cross-border borrowing by the world largest issuers. All figures are approximate quarterly estimates, with the first quarter of 2026 reflecting the most recent data available as of mid-2026, and the broad shape of the series is more reliable than any single quarterly figure. The international debt capital markets are global by nature, spanning issuers and investors across continents, which is why their deal value serves as a useful barometer of cross-border financial conditions rather than the fortunes of any single country.

Debt Capital Market Deal Value, Quarter by Quarter

The table lists the value of international debt capital market deals for selected quarters from 2017 to 2026. It shows the strong first quarters, the 2020 pandemic spike, the 2022 slump, and the record-setting recent quarters. Reading down the value column shows the familiar seasonal rhythm and the larger cycle, with the pandemic-driven peak of 2020, the slump of 2022 and the record-setting quarters of 2025 and 2026 all clearly visible against the steady first-quarter highs. Because the figures are quarterly, they capture the seasonality that annual totals hide, making clear that the headline strength of a year like 2025 rests heavily on its powerful first quarter rather than on steady activity throughout.

How Much Is Issued Each Year?

Across a full year, the international debt capital markets handle around 5 trillion dollars of deals. Annual issuance peaked at about 6 trillion in the 2020 pandemic year, fell to roughly 4 trillion in 2022, and recovered to about 5.7 trillion in the record year of 2025. The annual figures smooth out the strong seasonality and reveal the underlying cycle, showing how the appetite for borrowing surged in the cheap-money years, collapsed when rates spiked, and came roaring back as soon as central banks began to ease again. Annual issuance has ranged from about 4 trillion dollars in the lean year of 2022 to nearly 6 trillion in the pandemic year of 2020, a span that captures both the depths of the rate shock and the heights of the emergency-funding surge.

The swings track the cost of borrowing closely, with issuance rising when rates are low and falling when they spike, a relationship our federal funds rate coverage explains.

Peak, slump, record: annual deal value reached about 6 trillion dollars in the 2020 pandemic, fell to roughly 4 trillion in 2022, and recovered to about 5.7 trillion in the record year of 2025.

The 2025 total made it one of the strongest years on record for debt capital markets, as falling interest rates and heavy refinancing needs drew a flood of issuers back to the bond market after the lean years of 2022 and 2023. The recovery to record levels in 2025 also reflected a structural increase in borrowing needs, as governments funded large deficits and companies raised money for refinancing and for the enormous investment required by the artificial-intelligence boom. For governments in particular, the record issuance of recent years reflects the growing burden of financing large deficits, a trend that shows no sign of reversing and that is set to keep the debt markets busy for years to come. The contrast between the lean years of 2022 and 2023 and the record activity of 2025 captures, in a single statistic, how decisively the easing of monetary policy can transform the willingness of governments and companies to come to market and raise fresh debt.

Why Is the First Quarter Always Biggest?

The first quarter is always the busiest for debt capital markets, averaging about 1.5 trillion dollars of deals against just 1.0 trillion in the fourth quarter. Borrowers rush to lock in funding early in the year before uncertainty builds. The seasonality is one of the most reliable patterns in all of finance, repeating year after year with such consistency that a weak first quarter is treated as a genuine warning sign about the health of the bond market for the rest of the year. The gap between the busy first quarter and the quiet fourth quarter is striking, with the opening three months of the year typically handling around half as much again in deal value as the closing three, a consistent feature of the calendar.

This front-loading reflects both practical and strategic reasons, with issuers preferring to raise money while investor demand is fresh and budgets are newly set, a seasonality our short-term interest rates worldwide coverage helps frame.

The first quarter rules: the first quarter averages about 1.5 trillion dollars of deals against just 1.0 trillion in the fourth, as borrowers front-load funding early in the year.

The pattern is remarkably consistent, appearing in almost every year of the period, which is why a strong first quarter is taken as a sign of a healthy year ahead for the bond market rather than as an anomaly. The reliability of the first-quarter peak gives the market a predictable rhythm, with bankers planning their busiest period for the opening months and investors bracing for the heaviest supply of new bonds in January, February and March. For investors, the first-quarter rush brings both opportunity and challenge, offering a wide choice of new bonds to buy but also requiring careful selection as a flood of issuers competes for attention in the busiest weeks of the year.

The First Quarter Over Time

First-quarter deal value has trended upward over the period, rising from about 1.5 trillion dollars in 2017 to a record 1.8 trillion in 2026. Each recent first quarter has tended to set a new high as the market has grown. The first quarter is the single most important window in the debt calendar, and its steady growth over the period is a clean measure of how the underlying demand for bond financing has expanded even as interest rates have moved up and down. Tracking only the first quarter strips out the seasonality and isolates the underlying trend, which has been one of steady growth interrupted by a single sharp dip in 2022, before resuming its climb to a record in 2026.

The record first quarter of 2026 reflects a surge in borrowing to fund artificial-intelligence and data-centre projects, as well as heavy refinancing, themes our primary credit rate coverage connects to the rate cycle.

Rising to a record: first-quarter deal value climbed from about 1.5 trillion dollars in 2017 to a record 1.8 trillion in 2026, dipping only in the 2022 rate shock.

The steady rise in first-quarter issuance, interrupted only by the 2022 rate shock, shows how the underlying demand for debt financing has grown even as interest rates have risen and fallen, leaving the market larger than it was a decade ago. The record first quarter of 2026 capped a long upward trend, confirming that the appetite for debt financing had not only recovered from the 2022 shock but had grown to new heights, driven by refinancing and a wave of technology-related borrowing.

Do Interest Rates Drive Debt Issuance?

Interest rates are the single biggest driver of debt issuance. When the Federal Reserve raised rates sharply in 2022, deal value fell, and when rates began falling in 2024 and 2025, issuance surged back toward record levels. The inverse relationship between interest rates and issuance is one of the clearest in markets, because the cost of borrowing is the single biggest factor an issuer weighs, so when rates fall the pipeline of deals swells almost immediately. The 2022 episode was a textbook illustration of the relationship, as the fastest interest-rate rises in decades sent deal value tumbling, before the first cuts in 2024 set off a recovery that carried issuance back to record highs by 2026.

The relationship is clear in the data, with the 2022 to 2023 slump coinciding exactly with the fastest rate rises in decades, and the 2024 to 2026 recovery following the first cuts, a link our developed and emerging share price index coverage reflects.

Rates drive borrowing: deal value fell when the Fed raised rates above 5 percent in 2022 and 2023, and surged back as rates were cut in 2024 and 2025.

The logic is simple, since higher rates raise the cost of borrowing and deter issuers, while lower rates make debt cheaper and pull forward financing, which is why deal value moves almost inversely to the level of interest rates. The strength of the link also makes debt issuance a useful real-time gauge of financial conditions, since a sudden slowdown in deal value often signals that borrowing has become too expensive, while a surge points to easy money and confident issuers. Looking ahead, the path of issuance will depend heavily on whether central banks continue to cut rates, with further easing likely to sustain the recent boom and any renewed tightening threatening to cool it once again.

When Issuance Rose and Fell

Year-to-year changes show issuance grew in bursts and fell sharply. The biggest annual gain was about 20 percent in the 2020 pandemic year, while the steepest fall was around 23 percent in 2022 as interest rates spiked. The scale of the annual swings, from a 20 percent surge to a 23 percent collapse, underlines how sensitive the bond market is to conditions, expanding and contracting far more violently than the slow growth of the underlying economy would suggest. The largest single-year jump, in 2020, came as the pandemic forced governments and companies to raise emergency cash, while the steepest fall, in 2022, reflected the abrupt end of the cheap-money era as central banks moved to fight inflation.

The swings reflect how sensitive borrowing is to conditions, with crises and rate cuts drawing issuers in and rate shocks driving them away, a volatility our financial markets in the US coverage tracks.

Surges and slumps: the biggest annual gain was about 20 percent in the 2020 pandemic, while the steepest fall was around 23 percent in 2022 as rates spiked.

The pattern of sharp ups and downs underlines that debt issuance is far from steady, rising and falling by a fifth or more from year to year as the cost of borrowing and the appetite of investors shift. The volatility of issuance contrasts sharply with the steadier growth of the outstanding stock of debt, since gross issuance can swing wildly from year to year even as the total amount of debt in the world rises more gradually over time.

Each Quarter, 2017 vs 2025

Comparing 2017 with 2025 shows that every quarter has grown. First-quarter deal value rose from 1.5 to 1.7 trillion dollars, and even the quieter fourth quarter rose from 1.0 to 1.2 trillion, lifting the whole year. Breaking the comparison down by quarter shows that the growth was not concentrated in any single season but spread evenly across the year, a sign of genuine structural expansion rather than a one-off surge in a particular quarter. The 2017 to 2025 comparison also captures the resilience of the market, since despite the severe disruption of the 2022 rate shock in between, every quarter ended the period larger than it began, a sign of underlying structural growth.

The growth has been broad-based across the calendar, showing that the expansion of the debt market is not just a first-quarter phenomenon but a year-round increase in borrowing, a trend our global stock markets by country coverage sets in context.

Every quarter grew: from 2017 to 2025 first-quarter deal value rose from 1.5 to 1.7 trillion dollars, and even the quiet fourth quarter rose from 1.0 to 1.2 trillion.

The quarter-by-quarter comparison confirms that the market is structurally larger than it was, with more issuers raising more money across every season, even as the familiar first-quarter peak remains. The broad-based growth across all four quarters confirms that the debt market is structurally larger than it was a decade ago, with more issuers tapping the market more often and raising larger sums across every season of the year.

How the Year Splits by Quarter

Across an average year, the first quarter accounts for about 31 percent of all deal value, the second 27 percent, the third 23 percent, and the fourth just 20 percent. The year front-loads heavily into its opening months. The heavy front-loading of issuance into the first half of the year shapes the working lives of everyone in the debt markets, from bankers to investors, who know that the busiest and most important deals will almost always come in the opening months. The roughly 31, 27, 23 and 20 percent split across the four quarters has held remarkably steady over the years, making the calendar of debt issuance one of the more predictable features of an otherwise volatile market.

The skew toward the first half of the year, which handles nearly 60 percent of annual issuance, reflects the rush to raise funding early, a pattern our biggest companies by market value coverage links to corporate financing cycles.

Front-loaded year: the first quarter accounts for about 31 percent of annual deal value, the second 27 percent, the third 23 percent, and the fourth just 20 percent.

The consistent quarterly split makes issuance fairly predictable in its rhythm, even as the total size of the market swings with interest rates, giving bankers and investors a reliable seasonal pattern to plan around. The predictability of the quarterly split is valuable precisely because the overall size of the market is so volatile, giving participants at least one reliable pattern to plan around amid the larger swings driven by interest rates.

The Biggest Quarters on Record

The biggest quarter on record was the second quarter of 2020, when the pandemic drove about 1.9 trillion dollars of deals as borrowers rushed to raise cash. The first quarter of 2026, at 1.8 trillion, is the second largest. The record quarters serve as markers of the periods when borrowing conditions were at their most favourable, whether driven by the emergency funding needs of the pandemic or the refinancing wave and technology boom of the mid-2020s. The pandemic-driven second quarter of 2020 stands out as the single busiest quarter, a moment when the combination of collapsing confidence and emergency central-bank support produced an unprecedented rush to raise debt while it was still possible.

Most of the largest quarters are first quarters, reflecting the strong seasonality, with the pandemic-driven second quarter of 2020 the main exception, a spike our largest asset managers coverage connects to the flight to funding.

Pandemic and recovery peaks: the busiest quarter was the second of 2020, at about 1.9 trillion dollars, followed by the record first quarter of 2026 at 1.8 trillion.

The record quarters cluster in the pandemic year and the recent recovery, the two periods when borrowing conditions and refinancing needs combined to push issuance to its highest levels. The clustering of record quarters in just two periods, the pandemic and the recent recovery, is itself revealing, showing that the very largest bursts of issuance tend to come either from emergency need or from unusually favourable borrowing conditions.

Issuance Since 2022

Since 2022 the international debt capital markets have recovered strongly. After deal value slumped in the 2022 rate shock, falling to about 0.8 trillion dollars in the fourth quarter, issuance climbed back to a record 1.8 trillion by the first quarter of 2026. The strength of the recovery since 2022 has surprised many observers, demonstrating how quickly the debt market can rebound once the cost of borrowing falls, with issuers who had delayed financing rushing back to lock in lower rates. The years since 2022 contain both one of the weakest quarters of the period, the rate-shocked fourth quarter of 2022, and the record first quarter of 2026, a swing that captures the full range of the market in a short span.

The recovery has been driven by falling interest rates, heavy refinancing of debt issued in the cheap-money era, and a wave of borrowing to fund technology projects, a revival our leading fund groups coverage frames.

From slump to record: after falling to 0.8 trillion dollars in the rate-shocked fourth quarter of 2022, deal value more than doubled to a record 1.8 trillion by the first quarter of 2026.

Most striking is how quickly the market rebounded once rates began to fall, with deal value more than doubling from its 2022 trough to its 2026 peak in little more than three years. The more than doubling of quarterly deal value from the 2022 trough to the 2026 peak ranks among the sharpest recoveries the market has seen, a testament to how powerfully falling rates can revive borrowing once they begin to come down. Whether the recovery can be sustained depends largely on the path of interest rates and on the continued appetite of investors for the flood of new bonds, particularly the large volumes being issued to fund technology and infrastructure. The pace and scale of the rebound have left the market larger than ever, with the record first quarter of 2026 standing as a clear marker of how far international debt issuance has come since the depths of the 2022 rate shock.

Debt Capital Markets in Numbers

A few numbers capture the picture. International debt capital market deals have run near 1.5 trillion dollars a quarter, peaked at 1.9 trillion in the 2020 pandemic, slumped below 1.0 trillion in 2022, and hit a record 1.8 trillion in the first quarter of 2026. These figures together make debt capital market deal value one of the most telling barometers of financial conditions, rising when money is cheap and confidence is high and falling sharply when rates spike or uncertainty grips the market.

The figures matter because debt capital markets are how the world borrows, funding governments, companies and projects, a role our leading financial centres coverage sets in the wider financial system.

Together these figures show a market that swings sharply with interest rates but has grown larger over time, handling a record flow of deals in 2025 and 2026 as borrowing conditions eased.

International Debt Capital Markets: The Big Picture

Taken together, the value of deals on the international debt capital markets from 2017 to 2026 traces the rhythm of global borrowing, from the pandemic surge through the rate shock to the record recovery, much of it arranged by the firms in our gold as an investment and wider markets coverage.

Whether issuance holds near its recent records or cools depends on interest rates and the appetite of borrowers, but debt capital markets remain the foundation of how the world raises money, alongside the assets in our crypto market and largest ETFs overviews.

Frequently Asked Questions: Debt Capital Markets