Whisper it, but we may finally be seeing the IPO window reopening in 2026.
Biotech listings saw their heyday in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, when an incredible 87 U.S.-based drug developers surfed a wave of goodwill from generalist investors onto the public markets in 2021. That interest subsided to an annual average of closer to 20 listings by U.S. biotechs until 2025—when the number of IPOs sunk to a nadir of just 11, according to data from Pitchbook.
But the mood music seems to have changed in the early weeks of 2026, with a steady stream of biopharmas lining up to ring the Nasdaq bell.
Aktis Oncology set the tone in the early days of January, raking in $318 million via an upsized offering that the company will use to fund early-phase clinical trials of its two lead radiopharmaceutical candidates.
“We could feel the shift in the appetite for IPOs in November [and] December,” Aktis CEO Matthew Roden, Ph.D., told Fierce.
“We felt very strongly that sticking our necks out [as the] first of the year … that it would be a successful IPO,” Roden said.
Boston- and North Carolina-based Aktis had initially been aiming for net proceeds of around $181 million, but the company was able to shift 17.6 million shares—significantly above the 11.8 million shares it had previously envisaged.
“We knew there was going to be strong demand, but it was very gratifying to see that excessive level of demand,” Roden recalled.
Aktis briefly held the record for the largest biotech IPO since 2024—but it was overtaken last week by California’s Eikon Therapeutics, which will use its $381 million listing to bankroll phase 2/3 trials of its lead immune modulator. In fact, Eikon was just one of four biopharmas that burst onto the public markets last week.
While most of the initial crop of IPOs have come from U.S. companies, Belgium’s Agomab Therapeutics scored a respectable $200 million IPO on the Nasdaq.
The immunology biotech’s pipeline centers on a pair of ALK5 inhibitors licensed from Spain’s Origo Biopharma. Last week’s public listing was needed to “really access deep and biotech-focused capital” to support this pipeline, Agomab CEO Tim Knotnerus told Fierce.
“In order to have sufficient funding from long-term investors [and] a broader investor base to fund both of these studies, plus earlier research work, we felt it’s the right time to access the public markets,” Knotnerus said in an interview.
Biotechs were deterred from listing last year due to a cold reception by investors, but Knotnerus said Agomab “sees the climate and the reception changing, especially for clinical-stage assets.”
“You’ve seen that change growing over the last couple of months,” he added. “That’s why we’re not the only one—you also see other companies now considering access to the public markets.”
In addition to the likes of Agomab, February has seen IPOs from companies dabbling in approved drugs, including Spyglass Pharma, which is working on long-acting versions of approved medicines for chronic eye conditions. SpyGlass bagged a $150 million Nasdaq listing, while Connecticut’s Veradermics—which is developing an oral version of the molecule behind hair loss treatment Rogaine—made a splash with a $256.3 million debut on the New York Stock Exchange.
“Taken together, [last] week’s activity points to a bifurcated reopening,” Ben Zercher, Ph.D., senior biotech and pharma analyst at PitchBook, explained in a statement.
“Product-focused companies built around clinically grounded programs are forming the backbone of the window, while larger platform-oriented issuers are testing how far investor appetite can extend beyond near-term validation,” Zercher added.
Matt Lane, principal and founder of biotech investor relations advisors Milestone Advisors, helped hair-loss-focused Veradermics navigate the IPO process. He attributes the initial success of this year’s early crop of biopharma IPOs to the fact that they already have drugs in the clinic.
This marks a stark change from the heady days of the pandemic when companies were willing to try their luck on the public markets without having seen a hint of clinical data.
“One of the reasons we’re in the position that we’re in is that over the course of 2020 and 2021, you had hundreds of companies become public that, frankly, had no business being public companies,” Lane told Fierce in an interview.
“Because of the cooling off period [and] the lack of access to the public markets, the current generation of companies have had to wait a lot longer, and therefore they’ve been able to develop their programs with a lot more data,” Lane said.
“For an IPO to be interesting to a generalist [investor], they just have to have certain parameters—data, catalysts, a reasonable pathway to commercial revenues—which all kind of fit together,” he continued. “And so what you’re seeing is IPOs that just tick a lot more boxes for a lot more investors.”
Some disease areas are also more attractive to investors. Lane, who is advising “several” other biotechs interested in going public this year, said there is always interest in oncology drugs.
“Probably the biggest group of companies that we’re seeing are later-stage cancer companies who have human data that show a true clinical benefit—an extension of at least progression-free survival, if not overall survival,” he said. “I think you’ll see plenty of those this year.”
Beyond oncology, orphan diseases and the red-hot diabetes and obesity spaces are also in demand, Lane added.
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Brad Stewart, national life sciences leader at business advisory firm BDO, agreed that interest in “oncology is always very strong.” He also listed orphan diseases as another key area, while noting that “everyone wants to be in the GLP-1 space.”
The performance of newly listed biotechs like Aktis, which has managed to maintain its stock at around the $18 price it debuted in early January, is a “good sign,” according to Stewart.
He compares biotechs to tech startups in that—unlike most companies that decide to go public—they don’t have any revenue for investors to gauge the business’s prospects.
While Aktis only had one drug in the clinic when it went public—a miniprotein radiopharmaceutical in a phase 1b study for Nectin-4 expressing tumors—the biotech’s CEO Roden said the company already had data on hand to persuade investors, as well as the backing of Eli Lilly.
“We do have imaging data in patients that suggest that the drugs are doing exactly what they were designed to do, which is to deliver cancer-killing radioisotopes into tumors, specifically while sparing normal tissues of radiation exposure,” Roden explained.
“In other words, we had lead programs with data that support a large market opportunity,” he added.
Stewart said he hopes that the relative stability of the most recently publicly listed biotechs means that the people buying these shares are “more sophisticated” investors who “realize that they made an investment in something with a reasonable understanding of the risks and upsides from the results of those clinical trials.”
But even with a more reliable set of investors, Stewart warned that the good start to biotech IPOs this year could still be derailed by a “weakness in the overall stock indexes.”
Agomab experienced this firsthand, having been forced to adapt to market fluctuations in the months before successfully going public.
“We had to navigate the U.S. government shutdown [and] the unstable geopolitical climate,” the biotech’s CEO Knotnerus pointed out. “But that’s the same for every biotech drug developer—we’re used to uncertainty, which is to a large extent outside of our control.”
Even a stock market jolt in the days leading up to the IPO, which saw the XBI biotech index lose 5% of its value, wasn’t enough to give Knotnerus and his team second thoughts.
“We stuck to our plan,” he explained.
“Over the last couple of months, we’ve been able to make the right strategic decisions—together with a very strong banking syndicate and full support of our own board and existing investors—to be ready when the market opens up,” the CEO said. “When that happened, we were ready to execute.”
Aktis’ CEO Roden has a similar philosophy: “Fortune favors the prepared.”
“It’s a matter of operational preparation,” he continued. “It’s a matter of having all the right ingredients to be IPO-ready as a company—I think those were key things that worked for us.”
Agomab’s Knotnerus “truly hopes” more of his biotech peers will be able to follow its lead and go public while the IPO window remains open.
“There’s high-quality innovation that needs long-term financial support, and obviously, at a certain stage, the public markets are the right way to go,” he concluded.
One company that already looks likely to follow this logic is Generate:Biomedicines. Among the rush of listings last week, the Flagship Pioneering-founded biotech unveiled its own ambition to file an IPO, with the proceeds earmarked for ongoing trials of its phase 3-stage anti-TSLP antibody for respiratory conditions.
Aktis’ Roden said there are a “couple of tailwinds at the moment” that could help blow more biotechs toward the public markets.
“Biotech has done a good job over the past year of just creating good data and advancing important product opportunities,” the CEO explained. “That’s the most important thing that can drive sector performance.”
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So should we expect to see plenty more biotechs test the waters of the public markets this year?
“I would say, without a doubt, overall demand for services such as ours is representative of the idea that there’s going to be a much stronger IPO market this year,” Milestone Advisors’ Lane said.
While he can’t divulge details about his clients, Lane told Fierce that his firm is expecting to see one of those companies go public by around the first half of this year. “We have two others in late-stage conversations for probably mid- to late-year,” he added.
Assuming that the biotech markets remain in sync with the overall public markets, Lane predicts that we could see “30 to 35” biotech IPOs in 2026.
“If I’m wrong, I’m guessing I’m wrong because I’m too conservative,” he said.
BDO’s Stewart also described 30 IPOs for 2026 as “a very reasonable baseline.”
“I think people would consider that a solid year,” he added. “Not a home run year, but I think everyone would take that as a positive year, and I think that’s a reasonable track we’re on right now.”