Every January, the institutional investment world enters what might as well be called CMA season.
CIOs, investment committees, and asset allocators revisit long-term return assumptions across asset classes. Asset managers respond in force—publishing annual outlooks, revising expected returns, and reframing the opportunity set for the next decade.
For public markets, this process is well-trodden. For private markets, it’s only just starting to catch up.
Capital market assumptions (CMAs) are long-term estimates of expected returns, volatility, and correlations for different asset classes, used by institutional investors to set strategic asset allocations and build portfolio models. In private markets, CMAs are particularly important — and particularly difficult to produce — because returns are reported with a lag, valuations are smoothed, and performance varies significantly by vintage year and manager. Major asset managers including KKR, BlackRock, J.P. Morgan, and PGIM publish annual private markets CMAs that allocators use to calibrate their return expectations and pacing models.
By now, nearly every major asset manager publishes a 2026 outlook. These documents typically cover macro views, regime shifts, and portfolio construction themes.
Only a subset, however, go a step further and publish explicit Capital Market Assumptions (CMAs)—point estimates for long-term returns, volatility, and correlations.
That distinction matters.
Outlooks tell a story.
CMAs drive models, pacing plans, and allocation decisions.
For decades, detailed CMAs were largely confined to liquid asset classes—public equity, fixed income, and inflation-linked assets.
Private equity, private credit, infrastructure, and real assets were often:
Grouped into a single “alternatives” bucket
Assigned stale, heuristic return assumptions
Updated infrequently, if at all
That’s changing. A growing number of managers are now publishing private-markets-specific views, either:
Embedded within broader multi-asset CMAs, or
As dedicated private markets outlooks
Examples include firms like Aberdeen Investments, BlackRock, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, KKR, and PGIM—each now providing more granular guidance on private market return expectations.
While progress is real, it comes with a new challenge.
Private markets CMAs are:
Scattered across dozens of PDFs
Inconsistent in structure and terminology
Hard to compare year-over-year
Rarely centralized in one place
For allocators running an annual recalibration exercise, this creates unnecessary friction—especially when models still live in Excel.
To make CMA season easier for private markets investors, we’ve compiled a comprehensive Excel resource covering all known 2026 outlooks and CMAs related to private markets.
What You’ll Find in the Download:
1. A complete inventory of private markets outlooks
Covers both private-markets-focused publications and multi-asset outlooks
Includes direct links to each original source
Spans GP-led, multi-asset, and alternatives-specialist perspectives
2. Extracted CMA point estimates from 9 managers
Only includes firms that publish explicit private markets CMAs
Standardized return assumptions across asset classes
Clean, model-ready format
3. Year-over-year comparison vs. 2025
See how expectations have shifted
Identify consensus moves and divergences
Stress-test your own assumptions against the market
Private markets allocations are larger, more complex, and more scrutinized than ever. Relying on outdated or opaque return assumptions is no longer defensible.
CMA season is your annual chance to:
Re-anchor expectations
Pressure-test strategic allocations
Align models with how managers actually see the world
But only if the data is usable.
To give allocators a concrete starting point, the table below summarises average return assumptions across six private markets asset classes, based on 2026 CMAs published by a cross-section of major institutional asset managers including KKR, BlackRock, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, PGIM, and Aberdeen Investments.
| Asset Class | 2026 Average Estimate | 2025 Average Estimate | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Private Equity | 10.17% | 9.30% | +0.87% |
| Venture Capital | 10.00% | 8.97% | +1.03% |
| Private Infrastructure | 9.62% | 7.43% | +2.19% |
| Private Real Estate | 7.96% | 7.60% | +0.36% |
| Private Credit | 7.02% | 6.73% | +0.29% |
| Real Assets | 6.30% | 5.30% | +1.00% |
Across all asset classes, consensus return expectations have moved higher versus 2025, with infrastructure and venture capital seeing the largest upward revisions. The full breakdown by individual manager — including firm-level assumptions and methodology notes — is available in the downloadable Excel resource below.
Based on 2026 capital market assumptions published by major institutional asset managers, consensus return expectations for private markets have moved higher versus 2025 across all asset classes. Private equity buyout and venture capital lead at approximately 10%, followed by private infrastructure at 9.6%, private real estate at 8%, private credit at 7%, and real assets at 6.3%. Infrastructure saw the largest year-over-year revision, up over 2 percentage points. These estimates vary by manager and methodology — the full breakdown across nine managers is available in the downloadable Excel resource. Allocators should use these figures as a calibration reference rather than a precise forecast, and stress-test their models against a range of assumptions.
👉 Download the full 2026 Private Markets CMA & Outlooks Excel by submitting the form on the left
If you’re recalibrating return assumptions for private equity, private credit, infrastructure, or real assets, this resource will save you hours.
At Tamarix, we spend a lot of time turning fragmented GP disclosures into allocator-ready data. This is one small example of that philosophy—applied to the most important spreadsheet of the year.