2026 Foundation Roadmap

November 2025

Dear GRESB stakeholders,

The Foundation Board is proud to continue leading the GRESB Foundation and promoting sustainability across the global real asset industry. This updated Roadmap celebrates our collective progress toward a shared vision—an investment community working together to build a more sustainable and resilient world. As we look to the future, the Foundation is focused on amplifying our impact and empowering real change.

Our mission is simple but powerful: to bring investors and managers together to create sustainable assets that deliver lasting value. The GRESB Standards define the information real asset investors and managers need to understand, benchmark, and improve performance—recognizing and rewarding assets that are clean, efficient, and resilient. These assets set the standard for better investments and a better world.

The Standards continue to drive real asset performance. Guided by the recently established Principles for Governing Standards Development, the continued evolution of the Standards will reduce reporting burden, improve transparency and predictability, increase alignment with emerging regulations, and address urgent social and environmental challenges.

The 2026 Standards offer multi-year implementation plans for key issues, including energy efficiency, decarbonization planning and net-zero alignment, physical climate risk and resilience, and embodied carbon. The Foundation is confident these topics will help shape a more sustainable future for the entire real asset industry.

The Foundation is deeply grateful to our dedicated volunteers who share our mission to drive positive, sustainable change in the built environment. Together, we will continue strengthening the GRESB Standards and supporting investors and managers worldwide as they turn sustainability ambition into lasting impact.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Katie Jowett Board Chair, GRESB Foundation Barbara Strozzilaan 374, 1083 HN Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The GRESB Foundation is an independent, mission-based, non-profit organization dedicated to the development and operation of the GRESB Standards. The Standards provide the basis for the systematic assessment of the management and performance of real asset companies and funds around the world. The Foundation exists to ensure that GRESB Standards continue to meet the needs and priorities of real asset investors and managers. Foundation volunteers share a commitment to positive market transformation powered by effective communication between investors and managers.

The Foundation Roadmap provides a snapshot of the work of the Foundation at the end of 2025 and a high-level plan for the development of the GRESB Standards in 2026 and beyond.

• Mission and vision

• Theory of change

• Membership

• Roles and responsibilities

• Standard development priorities

• Plan of action for 2026 through 2028

High-profile activities that support the continued enhancement and relevance of the Standards are highlighted throughout the Roadmap.

In brief, the GRESB Foundation works to govern the GRESB Standards to meet the needs and priorities of real asset investors and managers. The Foundation’s work is based on a long-standing theory of change: Engaged investors-- empowered with timely, relevant, high-quality information—can drive positive change in the management and operation of real asset companies. The result is better, more valuable companies that benefit people and the environment. This basic theory has helped transform the real asset industry over the last fifteen years, with demonstrable improvements in the scope and quality of management and measured, real-world performance. Independent research has repeatedly shown that companies and funds with high GRESB Scores outperform their peers as investments, while simultaneously reducing negative social and environmental impacts.

The Foundation’s community of volunteers and stakeholders is justifiably proud of these achievements. However, they are also acutely aware of changing market conditions and differing priorities around the world, as well as the need for the GRESB Standards to adapt to meet emerging and evolving challenges and opportunities.

Today, Foundation volunteers recognize the need to balance the urgency of climate change and the cost of inaction against the challenges managers and investors face around the world. This balancing act means the Foundation must continue to investigate sustainability challenges and opportunities, while providing investors and managers with stability and predictability.

The Foundation recognizes 2026 as a year of transition. It maintains relative stability in both the Real Estate and Infrastructure Standards, in parallel with developing the updates needed to execute on the Foundation’s longer-term vision toward rewarding measured, real-world performance. The 2026 Standards follow through on the plan released by the Foundation in 2024 and published in detail in 2025.

The 2026 Standards development process will incorporate the following robust enhancements for both real estate and infrastructure:

• Real Estate Standard development will focus on the longer-term vision toward rewarding measured, real-world performance, including reflecting industry views and feedback from the public consultation in future updates, and refining absolute and improvement scoring strategies for GHG emissions and energy, extending the work done in 2025 on energy efficiency. The Secretariat will continue active communication efforts across 2026 to ensure updates are predictable, transparent, and responsive to industry feedback.

• Infrastructure Standard development will share the focus on streamlining and technical improvements. It will pursue a complementary path to prioritize performance, emphasizing improvement over time. In parallel, the Secretariat will continue existing work to implement and integrate the Investor Group on Climate Change’s Net Zero Investment Framework into the GRESB Infrastructure Asset Assessment.

The Roadmap outlines how these objectives will be accomplished and provides greater detail on implementation priorities. The bottom line for investors and managers is clear: GRESB Standards can and will meet the needs of this moment, while evolving to meet the challenges of the future.

To better understand the fundamentals that drive performance in real assets, along with today’s market dynamics and the broader context in which the Foundation develops the Standards, watch: GRESB 2025 Global Results & Insights.