UK and EU Competition Law and Policy: what to look out for in 2026

The CMA ended 2024 under pressure to do more to support economic growth, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer promising to “rip up the bureaucracy that blocks investment”. Still, few could have predicted the extent of the changes that would follow in 2025, as the Government concluded at the turn of the year that the CMA’s leadership was not sufficiently on board with its economic agenda.

It began with the unexpected replacement of CMA chair Marcus Bokkerink with former Amazon executive Doug Gurr (so far, on an interim basis). The CMA then set about implementing its previously announced “4Ps” framework (pace, proportionality, predictability and process) in earnest, promising to deliver a more business- and investor-friendly approach. It launched an unprecedented number of reviews and consultations and made a series of changes to its policies and procedures, including: 

• reviewing and adopting revised guidance on its approach to merger remedies, signalling a greater openness to behavioural remedies than in the past;
• changes to its phase one mergers procedure, centred on the pace of outcomes – including a new 40-working day target for pre-notification discussions; and
• revisions to the CMA’s cartels leniency and markets regime guidance documents. 

The pace of these exercises was relentless, with in some cases, new changes being consulted on whilst earlier consultations on revisions to the same guidance remained outstanding.

Some of these changes are already bearing fruit. The CMA has shown a greater willingness to consider and accept complex remedies at phase one, and clearances are being arrived at more quickly in straightforward cases. Those trends will likely continue, but overall more stability can be expected in 2026 as the dust settles on the various revisions, whilst noting that there is more to come, including:

• the recently announced review of the CMA’s approach to assessing merger efficiencies;
• a Government consultation on changes to the procedural tests in the Enterprise Act 2002; and
• possible changes to the CMA’s procedures for Competition Act 1998 (CA98) investigations (to date, the only area untouched by the 4Ps programme).

Changes may also be afoot from a private enforcement perspective, since the Government is reviewing the UK’s opt-out collective actions regime and has already confirmed its intention to amend the third-party litigation funding rules, to address some of the challenges created by the Supreme Court’s PACCAR judgment.
 

In contrast to 2024 – a historically quiet year in terms of antitrust enforcement, during which no infringement or commitments decisions were adopted by the CMA – 2025 saw a significant uptick in output. Between February and April the CMA issued three infringement decisions and went on to accept commitments in a further three cases, taking the CMA back to its long-term average of roughly six decisions a year.

However, most of these were legacy cases that concerned relatively old investigations, and the CMA has done little to replenish its pipeline. It opened only one new case in 2025, and closed another on administrative priority grounds. While the CMA recently changed its leniency procedures in an effort to reverse this trend, it currently only has four active CA98 investigations on its books (publicly, at least). The outcomes in the non-sports TV freelance services (closed on administrative priority grounds, whilst the parallel sports case ended with infringement decisions) and housebuilders (closed with commitments despite concerning horizontal information exchange) investigations also suggest that the CMA is more interested in resolving competition concerns than in pursuing infringement decisions and headline-grabbing fines. Against this background, 2026 is therefore likely to be relatively quiet in terms of output. 

Merger control enforcement was similarly subdued last year. Based on 2025-26 data to date, the CMA is on track for its second-lowest output in terms of phase one decisions and the number of phase two referrals has also been low (only three so far in 2025-26). There was also no prohibition decision in 2025 (other than the remitted Spreadex/Sporting Index decision). However, while merger control enforcement policy appears to have become more permissive, it is not open season, with  the CMA emphasising that it remains willing to act against “truly problematic” mergers. How much consolidation it is prepared to allow, and where to draw the line, could become a defining question for the CMA in 2026. 

One area in which the CMA has become much more active and is increasingly visible is on the consumer enforcement front, using its newly introduced direct enforcement powers - most notably in the launch of high-profile, ex officio investigations into the pricing practices of eight online businesses. This is likely to continue in 2026, since the CMA’s 2026-2029 Strategy puts consumer enforcement front and centre in a programme aimed at driving growth and improving household prosperity. The CMA believes that by strengthening consumer confidence through such enforcement, it can support the conditions for economic growth. We should, therefore, expect further announcements of consumer protection investigations in 2026, particularly considering that a Government study into (now-prohibited) “drip pricing” found the practice to be near ubiquitous across certain areas of the economy¹.

Also central to the 2026-2029 Strategy was the promotion of the CMA’s role as advisor to Government - providing recommendations on pro-competition interventions, with a particular focus on public procurement and regulatory barriers. The CMA also sees markets work as a way in which it can unlock competition – and with it, growth. For example, its ongoing market study into the civil engineering market for roads and railways cites concerns that the sector is being held back in its ability to support UK growth and productivity. 

Overall, the Strategy suggests a shift in priorities for the CMA - with less “stick” and more “carrot”. As explained in Sarah Cardell’s recent accompanying speech, the CMA now considers it crucial that it “act(s) as much as an enabler of competition as an enforcer of it”. 

Following years of preparatory work and legislative hold-up, the UK digital markets competition regime (DMCR) finally went live at the beginning of 2025. The CMA had established its Digital Markets Unit² some years previously, rapidly swelling its numbers, and conducted a number of detailed studies and investigations into digital markets that were prime candidates for regulation. All this pointed to a rapid rollout of the CMA’s new powers, and the CMA appeared to be off to a running start with the opening of the first two sets of strategic market status (SMS) investigations in the middle of January. Since then, however, progress has slowed significantly. 

First, a planned SMS investigation into a third area of digital activity failed to materialise by the end of H1 2025 as anticipated - the CMA noted in June that it was instead “focused on progressing current SMS investigations”. As regards the CMA’s three live investigations - into Google’s general search product and Apple and Google’s respective mobile platforms - SMS designations were confirmed in October, but the CMA is taking considerably longer than expected to propose conduct requirements (CRs) that will act as a new rulebook for the designated activities. The CMA’s aim was to impose CRs at the same time as the designation decisions, or very shortly thereafter, but so far all it has done is publish “Roadmaps” indicating the sorts of CRs it intends to focus on first. 

These delays have not been explained. They may stem from a greater than anticipated workload, but could also reflect a more cautious approach from the CMA in light of the government’s current economic agenda. Nevertheless, the CR consultations should finally commence in early 2026, likely followed by another SMS investigation, once the CMA Board has considered its options, with perhaps a further investigation to follow later in the year. The most likely candidate activities for further SMS investigations include: (i) display advertising (given the findings of the CMA’s 2020 digital advertising market study); and (ii) cloud services (following the recommendations of the CMA Panel in its 2025 cloud services market investigation).

The level of restraint exercised by the CMA in enforcing its digital markets regime has not been replicated by the European Commission. This is despite the Trump administration taking office in January 2025 and the largest American tech companies lobbying vociferously for it to confront the EU over regulations (both the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and Digital Services Act (DSA)) they perceive as unfairly targeting them. The Commission has insisted that it enforces its laws fairly, without discrimination toward all companies operating in the EU. And concerns voiced by the US government and Congress, that the DMA is being “weaponised” against US companies, have not prevented the Commission from issuing material fines against both Meta and Apple. But the US’s unprecedented issuing of travel restrictions against former EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton at the end of December put further pressure upon the Commission.  

2026 therefore looks to be another pivotal year for the DMA. Outcomes are (over)due in several non-compliance cases, in particular: (i) against Google for favouring its own vertical search services, and for “anti-steering” provisions affecting developers that distribute apps via Google Play; and (ii) against Apple for discouraging the use of alternative app stores. The Commission’s resolve for issuing significant fines in the face of political pressure will therefore again soon be tested. Whilst the signs generally point to it being unswayed by such pressure, the Commission has also been prepared to arrive at a negotiated outcome, without recourse to financial penalties. 

At the same time, the Commission is taking steps potentially to broaden the scope of the DMA’s application, in the fields of cloud services and AI. 

Cloud services are already named as “core platform services” under the DMA, but no such services have been notified as meeting the DMA’s quantitative thresholds (which if met, trigger a presumption of designation). In November 2025, however, the Commission opened ex-officio investigations into whether Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services nevertheless meet the DMA’s qualitative criteria for designation. The outcome of those investigations is due by November 2026. 

In parallel, the Commission is conducting a broader investigation into whether the DMA’s current rulebook is effective in addressing unfair practices and limits on contestability in the cloud computing sector. And it has called for views on similar issues in respect of the AI sector, as part of its wider review of the DMA’s effectiveness. Both exercises could result in an expansion of the DMA’s conduct obligations. The Commission’s report on the DMA’s effectiveness is due in May 2026 (a summary of responses has already been published, noting broad support for the DMA and calls to expand is application in the AI and cloud sectors), but the market investigation into cloud services is likely to run until May 2027.

Like the CMA, the Commission has been reflecting on its enforcement approach recently, including in response to calls for it to do more to support EU competitiveness. And this competitiveness agenda is likely to influence a number of exercises that could see a material shift in the Commission’s approach to competition enforcement.

First and foremost is the review of the Commission’s merger assessment guidelines, with the Commission facing calls to update its horizontal and non-horizontal guidelines (published in 2004 and 2008 respectively) in order to “make the current Merger Regulation fit for purpose”. In particular, there has been a push for the Commission to attach greater weight to factors such as innovation, resilience and the changed security environment when assessing mergers. Whilst the working papers published by the Commission as part of last summer’s consultation did not point to a radical departure from current orthodoxy, there could still be surprises in store. The Commission is aiming to publish new draft guidelines for comment in spring 2026.

On the antitrust front, two significant developments are due. In July 2025 the Commission consulted upon a set of policy options for revisions to the procedural regulations³ that govern its investigations into breaches of Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). These revisions aim at modernising EU antitrust enforcement, for a digital, data-intensive era. Key amongst them are proposals to streamline the access-to-file procedure, introduce virtual inspections (supported by evidence preservation orders), and ease the requirements for imposition of interim measures. The precise details of the changes will become clearer when draft legislative provisions are published in H2 2026. 

Alongside those procedural changes, the Commission is also due to finalise its long-awaited guidelines on exclusionary conduct by dominant firms. The draft guidelines, published in August 2024, reflected an ambition to facilitate a more effective enforcement of Article 102. In particular, the Commission sought to introduce a number of presumptions on which it would be able to rely to avoid the need for detailed economic analyses of competitive effects. As explored in our previous article, the basis for some of those presumptions was questionable, and they have become even more vulnerable to challenge following the Commission’s defeat before the EU Court of Justice (CJEU) in the Intel case. This (as well as the likely imminent arrival of the CJEU’s ruling in Google Android) might explain why the Commission failed to finalise the guidelines last year as planned. It would be very surprising, however, if it did not do so before the end of 2026. 

To round matters off, the Commission is due to report to the European Parliament and Council by July 2026 on the first three years of the implementation of the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR), covering both substantive and procedural matters. In the face of high notification volumes but few interventions, this review could see the Commission table legislative proposals to streamline the (somewhat unwieldy) FSR clearance regime⁴. At the same time, there are signs that the Commission increasingly sees ex-officio FSR enforcement as key to furthering the competitiveness agenda, by securing a level playing field for EU companies.

Whilst its output (in terms of numbers of decisions) is below some of the peaks seen in the mid-2010s, overall, antitrust enforcement by the Commission remains relatively robust. After a very quiet 2023, in which there were only three infringement/commitments decisions, the Commission adopted ten decisions in each of 2024 and 2025. 

Three of last year’s decisions related to (alleged) abuses of dominance – fewer than the seven decisions issued in 2024, but still slightly above the Commission’s average over the last 15 years. So, despite recent setbacks before the CJEU, Commission enforcement of Article 102 TFEU remains alive and well.

We can expect this robust enforcement to continue into 2026, although we will probably see fewer final decisions. The Commission has maintained a strong pipeline of active cases, having conducted dawn raids in three investigations in 2025 (after four in 2024). In doing so it has stepped up its ex-officio enforcement efforts, rather than relying on complaints or leniency applications – in increasingly novel ways. The recent judgment in Michelin v Commission, for example, revealed that the Commission had conducted a quantitative analysis of hundreds of thousands of earnings calls by tyre manufactures, which it determined were indicative of price-signalling and therefore warranted further investigation. The Commission is increasingly likely to use such sophisticated detection methods, including AI-based tools, going forward.

There are also no signs of the EU’s competitiveness agenda (with its pro-business undertones) tempering the Commission’s enforcement zeal. Indeed, a core part of that agenda is deepening and reinforcing the EU’s Single Market, which is generally perceived as incomplete, if not under threat. As demonstrated in a number of investigations into vertical restraints over the past 18 or so months, antitrust enforcement is one tool the Commission can use to remove artificial trade barriers between EU Member States. 

Other antitrust enforcement priorities for the Commission are likely to include labour markets (following on from the Commission’s first employee no-poach decision in Food delivery services) and innovation-heavy sectors such as life sciences and digital markets. As to the latter in particular, the Commission’s recent decisions to open investigations into Meta and Google’s conduct in respect of AI chatbots illustrate the role Article 102 TFEU enforcement can play in complementing the ex-ante regulatory regime created by the DMA.