Is 2026 heading for the worst year for new South African stock market listings in 30 years?
Updated: Oct 12
11 October 2026
South Africa's public equity markets are likely heading for their worst year for new company listings since at least 1995, with just two new listings so far in 2026. Both listings have been on the JSE, and both are inward secondary listings of foreign companies.
The previous worst year in the AmaranthCX database, which has tracked South African listed companies since 1995, was 2023, when six companies listed across all the country's stock exchanges. Three each on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) and the Cape Town Stock Exchange (CTSE) respectively.
2026 looks increasingly likely to displace 2023 as the worst performance in the thirty years covered by the database. Four new listings would be required before year end to equal the previous low of just six. The JSE, which has attracted just two new listings this year, will need one more to equal its own 2023 low point of just three.
The two new listings of 2026 thus far were Aimia Inc., a Canadian investment holding company with its primary listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange, which listed on the JSE on 24 February, and Canal+, the French media group with its primary listing in London, which followed on 3 June. Canal+’s listing was in fulfilment of a condition imposed in order to get regulatory approval to acquire Multichoice - delisted in 2025. Both inward listings are welcome, but neither represents a South African operating business accessng the public equity market for the first time.
The difference between primary and secondary listings has become increasingly relevant in interpreting South Africa's listing statistics. The AmaranthCX database counts companies rather than individual securities, and includes genuine new listings across the JSE and competing exchanges. Duplicate secondary listings on A2X are not counted, nor are certain technical listings of financial and investment vehicles on the Integrated Exchange (I-Ex), whose listed shares provide access to an investment strategy rather than an operating business. These exclusions are intended to distinguish the admission of a new company to the public equity market from the creation of an additional listed financial instrument.
Substantive investment companies and property portfolio vehicles are retained in the database, even where their business is the ownership of investments rather than conventional trading operations. The figures therefore provide a measure of the changing population of South African listed companies, rather than just a count of every security admitted to trading.
Thirty years of South African stock market listings and delistings
The decline in new listings is particularly striking when considered alongside the continued departure of established companies from the public market.
Year | New listings, all exchanges | JSE listings | Delistings, all exchanges | JSE delistings |
2017 | 28 | 21 | 32 | 32 |
2018 | 18 | 12 | 18 | 18 |
2019 | 7 | 5 | 23 | 22 |
2020 | 9 | 4 | 20 | 20 |
2021 | 10 | 7 | 24 | 19 |
2022 | 7 | 4 | 26 | 22 |
2023 | 6 | 3 | 27 | 24 |
2024 | 11 | 8 | 13 | 10 |
2025 | 8 | 5 | 15 | 15 |
2026 YTD | 2 | 2 | 13 | 12 |
Source: AmaranthCX South African Listed Companies Database. 2026 figures to 11 October. Listings and delistings are counted by company, subject to the database's classification of secondary and technical listings.
In 2017, 28 companies listed on South African exchanges, including 21 on the JSE. There were also 32 delistings, leaving the number of listed companies four lower at the end of the year. By 2019, the number of new listings had fallen to just seven across all exchanges, of which five were on the JSE. The collapse in new listings was therefore well established before the pandemic.
There were nine listings in 2020, ten in 2021 and seven in 2022. Over those three years, 70 companies delisted across the various exchanges, compared with just 26 new listings. The position deteriorated further in 2023. Six new listings across the market, and only three on the JSE, were overwhelmed by 27 delistings, including 24 from the JSE. The net loss of 21 listed companies was the largest in the period shown above.
The modest improvement in 2024 was encouraging, particularly as the number of delistings fell to thirteen. However, the recovery in new listings was short-lived. In 2025, eight companies listed across the market, five on the JSE, while fifteen departed, all from the JSE.
By 11 October 2026, another thirteen companies had delisted, twelve of them from the JSE, against just two new listings. This represents a net reduction of eleven companies across the market, including ten on the JSE, with the final quarter still to come.
The companies leaving the JSE in 2026 include some well-known names, among them Barloworld, Murray & Roberts, Metrofile, Curro, RFG Holdings, Clientèle, Balwin Properties and Renergen. Omnia, Santam and Brikor have also all announced corporate transactions that are likely to lead their delistings, although exact timing is uncertain.
The circumstances of these delistings were all different. Some businesses were bought out and taken private, others were merged into larger players, while others were forced to delist due to financial distress. Corporate activity that results in a delisting is neither evidence of market or economic failure - any healthy market should have regular delistings for all sorts of reasons - but when the rate of new listings remains persistently below that of delistings through the economic cycle and over decades, then the cumulative effect is the erosion of South Africa's public equity market.
The emergence of alternative exchanges has introduced welcome competition, and the JSE has responded with efforts to simplify its listing requirements and reduce the costs of remaining listed. Nevertheless, the contribution of the competing exchanges to the overall number of new companies entering the public market remains modest.
The experience of 2023 illustrates this particularly clearly. Half of that year's six new listings took place outside the JSE, yet even including those additional exchanges, the country experienced its worst year for new listings since 1995. The fact that the combined market is now struggling to attract even that small number of new companies suggests that the problem extends beyond the listing rules and fees of any particular exchange.
The shrinking market for public equity capital
AmaranthCX has argued for some time that the decline in South African listed companies is closely associated with the changing structure of the country's savings and investment industry.
Over the past three decades, an increasing proportion of savings has been intermediated through large institutional investment managers, retirement funds and collective investment schemes. These institutions typically favour larger and more liquid listed companies, where meaningful amounts of capital can be deployed without creating excessive concentration or liquidity risk.
The traditional relationship between households, stockbrokers and the smaller listed companies in which they invested has also deteriorated. Much of the savings that once might have found its way directly into the shares of growing businesses is now managed through tax incentivised pooled investment products, often with mandates or benchmarks that favour established large-cap companies.
This is a rational response by individual investment managers to the incentives and constraints under which they operate. Collectively, however, it has made public equity markets less effective as a source of capital for smaller and growing enterprises.
South Africa's historically deep and sophisticated public equity markets are a important competitive advantage for an economy of its size. The steady decline in the number of listed companies represents a loss of that advantage. It reduces investment choice, diminishes opportunities for smaller businesses to access public capital and concentrates the market in an increasingly limited number of large issuers.
With only two new listings recorded by 11 October 2026, both inward secondary listings of foreign companies, there is little evidence that this long-running decline will be turned around.
It would take an unusually busy final quarter to prevent 2026 from becoming the worst year for new listings across South Africa's stock exchanges in the entire AmaranthCX series extending back to 1995.
The underlying company-level data, including listing and delisting dates, exchange identification and company classifications, are available in the AmaranthCX South African Listed Companies Database — October 2026. The database excludes duplicate A2X listings and selected technical listings of financial investment vehicles. Figures for 2026 are provisional and exclude prospective transactions until completed.
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