2026 is set to be another important year for claimants and class representatives seeking redress for competition law infringements in the UK. While questions about legal thresholds for the proper functioning of the regime have not fallen away entirely – particularly following the Supreme Court’s judgment in Evans – they are no longer the key focus. As the collective proceedings regime matured in 2025, the emphasis has shifted to questions of delivery for class members: funding certainty, the policy case for opt-out proceedings and distribution of compensation.
Against that backdrop, four themes are likely to shape the year ahead:
- Collective actions reach judgment, with more to follow: having moved beyond settlement dynamics in 2025, collective proceedings are increasingly being framed for sustained merits litigation in 2026.
- Funding moves from workaround to confidence: post-PACCAR uncertainty is giving way to clearer appellate guidance, prospective legislative reform and closer Tribunal oversight, creating a more stable footing for collective actions in 2026.
- Opt-in or opt-out? Heightened scrutiny after Evans: following the government’s 2025 consultation and the Supreme Court’s judgment in Evans, the Tribunal’s focus is likely to sharpen on whether opt-out treatment is justified in light of the strength of the case and the practical availability of opt-in alternatives. Proposed class representatives should expect closer examination of how the chosen procedural route will deliver effective redress for the class in the particular circumstances of the proceedings.
- Digital markets regulation may open new enforcement pathways: the introduction of binding conduct requirements are likely to create new pressure points for private claims against platforms designated under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act 2024.
Collective actions reaching the merits
2025 marked a significant inflection point: collective proceedings reaching full merits determinations, including the standout case of Kent v Apple, in which the Tribunal ordered substantial damages having found that Apple held and abused dominant positions in its iOS app markets. While some actions did not secure favourable outcomes in 2025 (Gutmann (boundary fares), Spottiswoode v Nexans[1]), the wider body of recent judgments confirms that collective actions are capable of being litigated through to conclusion, with detailed findings on market definition, impugned conduct and its alleged competitive effects.
For class members, this matters. Collective actions can no longer be dismissed as simply settlement-driven procedural vehicles; they are now a credible route to litigated outcomes, with real downside risk for defendants and real upside potential for classes.
The Tribunal also heard major collective action trials in 2025 including McLaren (car shipping cartel) and the first liability trial in Which? v Qualcomm (smart chips). 2025 also kept distribution and settlement governance in focus – most notably the Tribunal’s approach in Merricks and the boundary fares distribution experience, reinforcing that ‘delivery’ issues will remain front and centre in 2026. This month’s settlement hearing in McLaren will the first exhibition of this.
Further proceedings are already listed for trial in 2026, including Neill v Sony (PlayStation) and the consolidated Coll/Rodger/Epic (Google Play Store) proceedings, where the Tribunal will again be asked to determine issues of liability on a fully contested basis. 2026 may also see the first Court of Appeal determination regarding a merits judgment, in Kent. 2026 can therefore be expected to bring further substantive liability findings, reinforcing a landscape in which collective actions must be prepared on the footing that trial, and appeal, is a realistic and increasingly common end point.
Funding after PACCAR: from workaround to confidence
A defining feature of the past two years has been the continuing fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision in PACCAR. At the beginning of 2025, litigation funding markets operated against a backdrop of residual uncertainty following the classification of certain litigation funding agreements as damages-based agreements (DBA). Although class representatives and funders adapted by developing workable structural responses – most notably returns calculated by reference to multiples of invested capital – the absence of a statutory fix continued to be a material consideration for funders’ risk assessment and deal terms, particularly for complex and long-running opt-out claims.
That uncertainty began to narrow during 2025. In Gutmann v Apple, the Court of Appeal delivered the most significant funding judgment of the year, firmly rejecting arguments that multiple-of-outlay funding arrangements (including those subject to caps) should be treated as DBAs. Importantly, the Court also confirmed that funding structures under which the litigation funder is paid in priority to the class are not impermissible in collective proceedings, subject to the Tribunal’s ongoing supervisory role. The Court further held that contingent or ‘fallback’ percentage-based provisions do not render such agreements unenforceable unless and until the law changes.
In parallel, the government’s consideration of the Civil Justice Council’s final report on litigation funding has given rise to clearer political signals. Remarks from Sarah Sackman, legal services minister, towards the end of 2025 indicated a positive intention to legislate to reverse the effect of PACCAR,[2] framing the issue as one of restoring access to justice rather than curbing third-party funding. A legislative response to reverse PACCAR and institute a light-touch regulatory framework focused on transparency and conflicts management now appears to be a matter of timing rather than principle. And while any reform is unlikely to apply retrospectively, it would mark a material shift in the regulatory backdrop.
At the same time, 2025 saw a continued willingness on the part of the Competition Appeal Tribunal to engage actively with funding arrangements at the certification stage (Riefa v Apple, Rodger v Google), including requiring amendments where termination or settlement-control provisions risked undermining class interests. This reflects a broader move towards closer judicial oversight of funding governance, rather than scepticism about third-party funding itself.
Overall, these developments suggest that, entering 2026, the funding landscape for collective proceedings is becoming more settled in structural terms, albeit against a backdrop of increased judicial examination of the opt-out model. While scrutiny of funding structures will remain, improved appellate clarity and policy direction should reduce structural friction at the outset of well-substantiated claims and support more confident deployment of capital.
Opt-in or opt-out?
Alongside funding reform, the collective proceedings regime itself has been under sustained scrutiny following the government’s consultation, which closed in October 2025. That process brought familiar criticisms into sharper focus: concerns that certification may be too permissive; that opt-out proceedings can exert settlement pressure disproportionate to likely individual recoveries; and that early experiences of distribution have not always demonstrated effective consumer redress.
Those critiques have been met by robust defences of the regime from claimant-side respondents: opt-out proceedings remain, in many cases, the only viable route to compensation for diffuse competition harm; the regime has only recently reached procedural maturity and the Competition Appeal Tribunal has responded not by retreating from collective actions, but by tightening its gatekeeper role – scrutinising the suitability of class representatives, their governance arrangements, funding structures and settlements with increasing intensity.
This trend is reinforced by the Supreme Court’s December judgment in Evans v Barclays Bank plc & others. The Court made clear that opt-out proceedings are not the default mechanism and that the Tribunal must actively assess whether opt-out treatment is justified when compared with opt-in alternatives. The signal for 2026 is not hostility to opt-out claims, but higher expectations of justification and evidence to support an opt-out structure.
For class representatives, the implications are strategic rather than prohibitive. Applications for collective proceedings will need to engage more explicitly with why opt-in mechanisms would fail to deliver effective redress, taking into account the strength of the case, class composition, anticipated participation rates and the practicalities of distribution. While Evans is likely to encourage a more nuanced mix of opt-in and opt-out models, well-constructed opt-out claims—particularly those involving large, diffuse classes suffering market-dispersed harm—remain firmly in play.
Digital markets: new pathways to enforcement
Alongside these developments in competition litigation, 2026 may well see a shift in the practical application of the DMCC Act. The key development will be the likely imposition of binding conduct requirements on firms designated with ‘Strategic Market Status’, namely Google in respect of its online search business and mobile platform, and Apple in respect of its mobile platform..
Once imposed, these conduct requirements will provide a measurable legal and factual benchmark against which platform behaviour can be assessed. While they are regulatory in origin, their practical effect is likely to extend beyond public enforcement. In particular, alleged non-compliance, circumvention or delayed implementation may serve as a catalyst for private claims, either as follow-on actions or as standalone proceedings framed by reference to the same conduct.
For consumers and business users affected by platform practices, conduct requirements may increasingly function as the reference point around which private enforcement is structured.
Overall, 2026 is likely to be a year of consolidation for UK competition collective actions. Funding conditions appear set to stabilise and the regime is operating on a more settled jurisprudential footing, albeit that courts and policymakers continue to emphasise that opt-out actions must be thoughtfully constructed, well-governed and capable of delivering effective redress in practice.
The new collective proceedings applications most likely to succeed will be those that have funding, collective model choice and case theory aligned from the outset to withstand scrutiny from certification through to distribution.
[1] Preliminary issue judgment on the impact of the renewable energy regulatory regime.
[2] See the following article in the Financial Times: UK plans to remove curbs on litigation funders to broaden access to justice.
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