Private liquidity in 2026: a record secondaries market, with pricing split into two worlds

For four years the hardest question for a venture fund has not been what to buy, but how to sell. A narrow listing window and lengthening holding periods have pushed a meaningful share of exit activity into the secondary market, where investors sell fund stakes or single-company shares instead of waiting for a full liquidity event.

The first half of 2026 set a record: more than $120 billion of transactions, 20% above the H1 2025 peak, according to Evercore data cited by PitchBook. The notable part is not the headline number but who organises the trades. GP-led deals accounted for 53.7% of volume, reversing earlier years when limited partners selling out of positions drove the market.

Continuation funds: the tool for getting cash back to LPs

The dominant structure is the continuation fund: a manager sets up a new vehicle to buy assets out of an older fund, returning cash to existing LPs while holding on to the best names. PitchBook reports roughly $106 billion of such deals in 2025 — transactions designed explicitly to extend holding periods. In H1 2026, single-asset continuation vehicles remained the busiest corner of the market.

Higher volume has come with tighter governance norms. William Blair's 2026 secondary market report notes that 37% of continuation funds in 2025 involved the GP investing alongside from its most recent flagship funds, up from 23% in 2024, while the share of GPs putting fresh money in on top of rollover equity held near 50%. LPs, in short, increasingly demand that managers take risk at the price they themselves set.

Secondary pricing: two markets inside one

Analysis published by IMD in April 2026 shows a clear split: companies repriced under post-correction assumptions trade at roughly a 19% discount, while those still carrying 2021 marks trade at an average 68% discount. That matters for anyone holding paper from the cheap-money vintage: the last round price is not the clearing price.

But market depth is far thinner than the $120 billion headline suggests. Also per IMD, only 70 companies saw their first secondary trade in 2025, totalling $492 million. Most volume clusters in a small group of large names that happen to still be private; when they list, the secondary market loses the very liquidity that produced its record.

Employee liquidity: the plumbing exists, but sellers are hesitating

At the company level, employee tender offers have become a routine financing item: PitchBook research counted $18.4 billion of US startup tender offers in 2025. Even Nasdaq Private Market closed its own first employee tender in March 2026, having spun out of Nasdaq in 2021.

PitchBook reported the opposite dynamic in June 2026: at the largest IPO candidates, employees are choosing not to sell. The closer a company gets to a listing, the weaker the incentive to cash out early — meaning a company that wants tender offers as a retention tool has to run them early, not while queueing for the exchange.

• Who is selling: an LP that needs cash, or a GP that wants to hold longer — the two motives imply different prices.
• How the price was tested: by a prior M&A process, or only by an internal mark.
• Whether the manager is investing alongside at that price, and out of which fund.
• Which share class is changing hands and whether it carries a liquidation preference — a 20% discount on a weak class is still expensive.