Welcome to Part 1 of our 2026 Life Sciences Industry Outlook series. We are kicking off the week with a look at life sciences M&A activity in 2025 and what it may signal for 2026.
M&A activity in 2025 accelerated sharply, marking one of the busiest years on record. Aggregate deal value and the number of announced transactions rose meaningfully from 2024, buoyed by marginally improving financing conditions, greater boardroom confidence, and clearer regulatory expectations in the second half of the year. Mega-cap and upper‑mid‑market deals returned alongside a still‑healthy cadence of bolt‑on acquisitions and other smaller transactions by companies focused on incremental pipeline enhancements and portfolio gaps. Therapeutically, 2025 activity remained anchored beyond traditional oncology into cardio-metabolic (including obesity-adjacent assets) and neuroscience/CNS, while radiopharmaceuticals continued to command strategic interest and autoimmune/immunology remained a steady source of durable, de-risked, later-stage pipeline reinforcements.