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European Active ETF Trends: What’s Driving the Boom?
How the European active ETF market is evolving with record growth and fresh competition, plus a clearer way to compare strategies.
Key Takeaways
Explosive growth: The active ETF market in Europe has nearly tripled in size over the past two years, yet it still represents less than 3% of total ETF assets in the region.
A wave of new issuers entered in 2025, but the competitive hierarchy hasn’t shifted: J.P. Morgan, Fidelity, and Pimco still dominate by a wide margin.
Morningstar’s new framework now categorizes active ETFs as either “discretionary” or “systematic,” with discretionary strategies accounting for 77% of assets.
The active exchange-traded fund market in Europe has gained significant momentum in recent years, and 2025 marked an acceleration in both scale and competition. Established giants like J.P. Morgan, Fidelity, and Pimco maintained their lead, but the competitive landscape became more crowded as new players—Goldman Sachs, Fineco, Nordea, HSBC, and M&G—entered the fray.
For many entrants, this marks a strategic shift. Many of these are firms long known for active management—but traditionally wary of the ETF wrapper due to its low-cost, passive connotations. Today, however, they see ETFs as a distribution engine, a way to broaden reach while retaining their active DNA. That shift is also pulling in a new cohort of US managers looking to establish a European foothold.
Download the State of the European Active ETF Market report for deeper insights and visuals to share with advised clients.
How has the European active ETF market grown in recent years?
The numbers tell the story: active ETF assets amounted to €78.4 billion by the end of 2025, up from €52.5 billion in 2024. The size of this segment has nearly tripled in the past two years, but it remains a niche area, accounting for only 2.9% of total assets invested in ETFs in Europe compared with 11% in the US.
Inflows have been the main growth driver. In 2025 alone, active ETFs attracted €22.7 billion in net inflows. Equity strategies continue to dominate, representing €55.9 billion, or 71% of total active ETF assets.
A Record Wave of New ETF Launches
The past two years have been a whirlwind of activity, with a record-breaking 139 new ETFs launched in 2025—up from just 50 in 2024. For context, the previous eight years averaged only 10 launches annually. Meanwhile, the pace of closures remains slow.
Equity ETFs led the charge, with 64 new launches in 2025. But fixed income is catching up fast, with 49 new launches compared to just 12 the year before. Multi-asset and alternatives are also gaining traction, with seven and 16 launches, respectively, in 2025.
European Active ETF Launches and Closures
Source: Morningstar Direct. Data as of Dec. 31, 2025.
Active Equity ETF Flows Pivot to Systematic Strategies; Fixed Income Stays Discretionary
Equity continues to dominate, but flows into strategies following a systematic approach to stock selection have picked up considerably, totaling €9.1 billion at the end of 2025, compared with the €1.1 billion inflow they had posted for the entire 2024. By contrast, flows into equity ETFs in the discretionary style bucket gathered €4.8 billion in 2025, roughly half as much as their systematic peers and strongly down from the €13.5 billion netted in 2024.
In fixed income, the discretionary approach reigns supreme, with flows of €5.9 billion at the end of 2025 and hardly €0.5 billion gathered by ETFs following a systematic style.
Market Leaders: The Titans of Active ETFs
J.P. Morgan is the undisputed leader of active ETFs in Europe with a market share of 47%, thanks mostly to the success of its suite of research-enhanced index ETFs. Despite being a latecomer to the European ETF market, J.P. Morgan’s strategic focus on active strategies has paid off.
Fidelity holds the second spot with a 10.4% market share, while Pimco rounds out the top three at 6.7%, thanks to its ultrashort-duration strategies. Yet with leading providers expanding and newcomers becoming more ambitious, competitive intensity is only set to rise.
Largest Providers of Active ETFs in Europe
Source: Morningstar Direct. Data as of Dec. 31, 2025.
A Clearer Lens for Understanding Active ETFs
As the active ETF market grows, so does the need for clarity. Investors increasingly want a cleaner, apples-to-apples way to compare strategies.
Morningstar’s new methodology categorizes active ETFs along a spectrum from “discretionary” to “systematic,” offering a more nuanced view of how these funds operate. After analyzing fund documents and prospectuses, we assign each ETF a quantitative score that reflects its reliance on rules-driven models versus manager-driven judgment.
Morningstar's Active/Passive Strategy Type Classification Framework
Source: Morningstar Manager Research. European-domiciled single-stock leveraged products are generally issued as exchange-traded products owing to UCITS diversification requirements. Accordingly, such products are excluded from this research and the related calculations.
The result is a transparent, repeatable, and more intuitive framework for understanding the true style profile of an active ETF. Advisors can now access these classifications through new investment lists in Morningstar’s Advisor Workstation.
You can also find full holdings, historical performance, fees and expenses, and Morningstar Medalist Ratings for over 1400 European active ETFs.
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