Key takeaways
- The global luxury market is growing again in 2026, with personal luxury goods forecast to reach €365 to €373 billion. The growth, however, is being driven by different geographies, different categories, and different consumers than before.
- Experiences are outpacing tangible goods by 1.5 times, while the Americas are carrying the market as Europe and the Middle East drag on performance.
- Over 70% of the luxury consumers who stopped buying in the past two years say they intend to return, but not necessarily to the same brands, and not necessarily for the same reasons they left.
The global luxury market is growing again in 2026. Barely, but growing. Bain & Company and Altagamma, the Italian luxury goods manufacturers’ association, published their mid-year Monitor on 25 June 2026. The numbers show worldwide luxury spending at €1,443 billion in 2025, with the market projected to reach €1,440 to €1,470 billion by year-end 2026, representing growth of zero to 2% at constant exchange rates.
What the report describes is not a recovery in the conventional sense of the word. The consumers returning to luxury in 2026 are making different choices than the ones who left. The geographies driving growth have flipped. The channels through which people discover, evaluate, and buy luxury have been reorganized by artificial intelligence and the secondhand market. The number is almost beside the point.
What the global luxury market numbers say
Personal luxury goods — fashion, leather goods, watches, jewelry — sat at €358 billion in 2025, down 2% at current exchange rates versus 2024, though up 1% at constant rates. For 2026, Bain projects growth of 2% to 4%, reaching €365 to €373 billion. The firm assigns this base case a 70% probability, contingent on continued Middle East stabilization, resilient local spending, and a gradual recovery in Chinese demand. The first two of those three assumptions remain uncertain.
The first quarter was difficult. Personal luxury goods contracted between 3% and 5% at current exchange rates versus the same period in 2025. The macro context was punishing: Middle East conflict drove oil prices up, US inflation climbed to its highest since April 2023, consumer confidence hit an all-time low, and the ECB raised interest rates in June for the first time since 2023. Luxury share prices fell roughly 8% in January alone.
The second quarter looks better. Roughly 60% of luxury players are already outperforming their Q1 2025 results, a meaningful signal that the global luxury market is finding its footing after a turbulent eighteen months.
A market running at three different speeds
The regional picture could not be more uneven.
In the United States, luxury spending is rising across apparel and hard luxury categories despite persistent inflation. American-native luxury brands grew roughly 10% to 15% year-on-year in Q1 2026. Consumers under 35 are spending at a pace approximately four percentage points faster than older ones, and upper middle-class households are growing their luxury spending at roughly twice the rate of wealthier ones, a sign that the market is broadening its base rather than simply deepening it.
China is in cautious recovery. Online luxury sales jumped between 25% and 35% in Q1 versus the prior year, led by apparel rather than leather goods. Shoppers are stepping back from overt status purchases in favor of choices rooted in self-expression. This shift mirrors broader changes in how luxury consumers engage with premium brands.
Europe is the weak link. International tourist spending fell around 20% in February, with Middle Eastern visitors particularly affected by regional conflict. The Gulf luxury consumer base shrank by between 15% and 25% in early 2026. Tax refund data from May suggests some recovery is underway, with American, Chinese, and Middle Eastern visitor spending accelerating compared with April.
Where consumers are spending (and where they are not)
Jewelry is the standout category of 2026. Apparel, eyewear, and fragrances are holding up. Cosmetics are slowing. Leather goods and footwear remain under pressure, though both are on an improving trajectory. In watches, the dynamic has shifted. Collectors are increasingly rewarding craftsmanship and rarity over brand recognition, a move away from hype-driven purchasing that is also feeding momentum in the resale market.
The pattern running across all these categories? Experiences are growing at 1.5 times the rate of tangible goods — up around 5% compared to last year. Luxury hospitality, private jets, yachts, fine dining, and cruises are all resilient. Wines and spirits are not. Consumption is softening and people are buying less often or switching to alcohol-free alternatives altogether. Luxury automotive is dragging on overall performance, largely because of weaker-than-expected demand for hybrid models.
Within experiential luxury, the formats are shifting too. Immersive bookings across dining, leisure, and entertainment are up 30% year-on-year, driven by trips built around staying longer, going deeper, and engaging with the local culture. Travel beyond traditional hotspots has grown 20%, reflecting what Bain describes as an “Elsewhereism” trend among high-end travelers seeking less familiar destinations. Multi-generational travel is also rising alongside it, with roughly half of Gen Z consumers saying their luxury brand preferences have been shaped by their parents, a finding that should make brands rethink how they go about winning the next generation of luxury buyers.
Sports is part of that picture too. Over 80% of the total value of the global luxury industry is now represented by brands that have sponsored a sporting event in the past twelve months. The logic is straightforward: sports delivers the kind of cultural credibility and mass visibility that no traditional luxury advertising campaign can match at equivalent cost.
The luxury consumer has already moved on
The Bain-Altagamma data contains two figures that deserve the industry’s full attention. Half of all luxury consumers now consult the secondhand market before purchasing anything new. Vintage bag searches have more than doubled year-on-year. The resale market has moved from being a niche channel to a primary reference point for how a luxury consumer makes decisions, and what they are willing to pay.
Equally significant: approximately half of luxury consumers already use AI in their purchase journey, for brand discovery and product comparison. Nearly all of them plan to continue. Around one in four use AI to discover new brands and products; two in three use it to compare options before committing.
“Discovery, evaluation and purchasing decisions are increasingly mediated by artificial intelligence,” said Claudia D’Arpizio and Federica Levato, Senior Partners at Bain & Company and lead authors of the research. Which raises an uncomfortable question: if a brand is not surfaced by AI when a consumer is looking, does it even exist at all?
The bigger picture
The Altagamma-Bain Monitor 2026 does not describe a luxury industry that has resolved its structural problems. It describes one that has survived the worst of them. At least for now. According to the report, over 70% of luxury consumers who stopped buying in the past two years intend to return. The question is to which brands, and on what terms.
“The appetite for luxury remains strong,” said Federica Levato. “The tolerance for disappointing experiences or products does not.”
The global luxury market is growing again. Whether brands have learned anything from the past two years is the only thing that matters now.
