Financial advisors worldwide are increasingly committed to alternative investments, but a new global survey suggests the industry's biggest hurdles have shifted from whether to use alts to how to deliver them efficiently across entire practices. The 2026 iCapital Global Advisor Survey, which polled 870 financial professionals across 15 countries in the first half of 2026, found that 89% of advisors plan to maintain or increase their allocations to alternatives over the next 12 months. The share planning to actively increase allocations nearly tripled, jumping from 14% in 2025 to 39% in 2026.
Client demand is keeping pace, with 84% of respondents reporting that client interest in alternatives has increased or remained stable over the past two years. Interestingly, economic optimism among advisors declined from 74% to 61% over the same period, yet allocation intentions surged. That divergence suggests alternatives are becoming a structural fixture of long-term portfolio construction rather than a tactical bet on market conditions.
The survey highlights a widening gap between advisors' conviction in alternatives and their firms' operational readiness to implement them at scale. While four in five respondents described themselves as confident or very confident in selecting and allocating alternatives, 59% cited difficulty assessing liquidity and risk exposure across asset classes as a significant challenge. Compliance and regulatory concerns were flagged by 53%, and 49% pointed to portfolio construction difficulties.
Client reporting emerged as a top barrier for 20% of respondents, up sharply from 11% the prior year. Meanwhile, concerns about access to investment products have faded, dropping from 11% to just 5%, while the complexity of explaining alternatives to clients rose from 11% to 17%. The data suggests the industry has moved past the question of whether advisors can get into alternatives; the harder question now is whether firms can manage them consistently once they're in.
iCapital frames this as a three-stage journey: access, adoption, and scale. Most attention in recent years has focused on the first two, but the survey's central argument is that scale—delivering alternatives consistently across advisors, clients, and portfolios—has become the defining challenge for the next phase of growth. The firm-size breakdown sheds light on where different practices are in that journey. Firms managing under $400 million in assets under management are most likely to be in early-stage adoption, using alternatives primarily for diversification, with their biggest need being client education.
Mid-sized firms in the $400 million to $1 billion range are increasingly deploying alternatives as a competitive differentiator, using them to attract and serve more sophisticated clients. Their top needs are allocation guidance and client-facing materials. Larger firms above $1 billion are further along, focused on compliance infrastructure, semi-liquid access, and scale. This segmentation underscores that the operational challenges vary significantly by firm size.
On the technology side, risk and performance analytics tools ranked as the top technology priority, cited by 43% of respondents. Custodian and fund administrator connectivity jumped from 28% to 41% year-over-year, and demand for automated subscription and redemption processing rose sharply from 26% to 41%. Separately, 59% of advisors identified technology and implementation as a priority area for continuing education, underscoring that the knowledge gap has shifted from understanding what alternatives are to understanding how to operationalize them.
The asset class picture is also evolving. Private equity remained the most sought-after category at 66%, roughly flat from the prior year. But interest in hedge funds climbed from 42% to 54%, and venture capital interest rose from 26% to 37%, suggesting advisors are not just adding alternatives exposure broadly but are actively reshaping which parts of the alternative landscape they want to own. Real estate interest, by contrast, fell from 50% to 44%, consistent with a broader reassessment of the sector.
Advisors' expectations for evergreen fund exposure are rising. The share anticipating that their clients will hold 11% to 15% in evergreen strategies over the next two years climbed from 51% to 67%, while the share expecting less than 5% exposure fell sharply. That trajectory points to a structural buildout of semi-liquid alternatives across client portfolios and raises the operational stakes considerably for firms that are not yet equipped to manage those positions at scale. For more on how advisors are boosting private-market allocations, see this related coverage. Additionally, the rise in evergreen funds aligns with broader trends in outsourcing investment management to improve efficiency.
