A step-by-step guide to successfully completing your GRESB Assessment.
Table of contents
1. Review our GRESB Guides (formerly known as Reference Guides)
2. Familiarize yourself with our Assessment services
3. Engage your organization’s sustainability lead
4. Engage the GRESB Member Relations representative for your account
5. Log in to the GRESB Portal
6. Review the Assessment indicators and refer to the guidance in the Portal
7. Aim to complete your Assessment response by June 1
8. Review your preliminary GRESB Results
9. Review your final Assessment results
10. Communicate your results to investors and stakeholders
1. Review our GRESB Guides (formerly known as Reference Guides)
Over the years, GRESB has developed a wealth of resources meant to support all entities in their reporting efforts to our Assessments, most of which are updated on a yearly basis. In the spirit of transparency and to empower you to get a head start on the reporting process, all of these resources are readily available on our website.
Since 2026, GRESB Guides has become the primary home for GRESB Assessment guidance. GRESB Guides is a complete redesign of our resource experience, built to be more intuitive, practical, and closely aligned with how participants complete GRESB Assessments. This new platform will replace our legacy resource areas (e.g., documents.gresb.com and the website’s Resources library) and reflects Member feedback.
What’s new?
- Reference Guide content, Scoring Document content, technical FAQs, indicator summaries, and asset-level data is integrated at the indicator level
- Navigation is aligned with how the Assessments are completed in practice
The content remains fully aligned with the GRESB Standards; what’s changed is the clarity and accessibility of the guidance. The 2026 GRESB Real Estate Asset Spreadsheet can be found in this section of our GRESB Guides.
Additionally, the rest of our technical guidance documents has been moved away from our website to GRESB Guides, including our 2026 Infrastructure Asset Materiality & Scoring Tool and our GRESB Real Estate Standard 2026 Updates Summary Table.
2. Familiarize yourself with our Assessment services
We recommend starting your GRESB journey by evaluating which of our services can satisfy the needs of your entity and are relevant to your unique circumstances.
We broadly serve three types of members across both real estate and infrastructure business lines: investors (institutional investors and asset owners), managers (companies, fund managers, and asset operators), and partners (consultants, solution providers, and industry bodies).
Alongside the GRESB Real Estate and Infrastructure Assessments, we also offer pre-Assessment and post-Assessment services to help participants maximize the value from their sustainability efforts:
- The Pre-Submission Check is a high-level check of your Assessment prior to final submission. It helps you reduce errors that may adversely impact your Assessment results and ensure that your submission is as complete as possible. Please note that the deadline to request a response check is June 20, with calls scheduled between May 1 and June 27, subject to availability.
- The Technical Expert Touchpoint—launched in 2026—provides one-on-one support with a GRESB Member Success expert, offering targeted, on-demand guidance to address specific questions and challenges at any stage of the GRESB assessment cycle. The session supports participants in navigating the GRESB Portal, understanding Assessment indicators and requirements, working with the Asset Spreadsheet, and clarifying validation-related questions. It is available throughout the year.
- The Assessment Correction is a post-Assessment service designed to further strengthen the reliability of our Assessments and benchmark results. It is intended to be used in cases where you believe that there has been incorrect or incomplete data input or an error in a validation decision. The Assessment Correction is available between September 1 and September 15 (23:59 UTC).
- The Results Performance Review is a post-Assessment service carried out by the GRESB team. It features an examination of your Assessment results as presented in the Benchmark Report, followed by an hour-long discussion call. After the discussion call, you will receive a Results Consultation report. The Results Consultation is available from October 1 and must be requested by January 15 of the following year.
The GRESB Assessments follow a yearly reporting cycle, with our portal opening on April 1 and closing on July 1, 23:59 PDT. The key dates for the reporting cycle can be found in the GRESB Assessment timeline.
GRESB also offers a suite of additional products and solutions, including:
To learn more about how our investor members and participants leverage our data, services, and products to improve the resilience, efficiency, and performance of their investments, please see our case studies:
3. Engage your organization’s sustainability lead
Bring your sustainability manager or the individual responsible for sustainability at your organization into the Assessment reporting process from the very beginning. In addition to providing their expertise, they can help ensure all stakeholders are involved so you can successfully respond to each indicator in the Assessment.
If your organization does not have a dedicated staff member responsible for sustainability, you may use the Assessment as a framework for mapping responsibilities across various departments.
Additionally, GRESB collaborates with leading consultants and solution providers to support our member base in their reporting efforts. GRESB Partners can help you collect, report, and manage your sustainability data as well as complete the GRESB Assessments and improve your overall sustainability performance.
4. Engage the GRESB Member Relations representative for your account
Your GRESB Member Relations representative is available to help you set up for success from the get go. If you have any questions regarding the onboarding process, our fees, or a non-technical query, please reach out to the GRESB contact person for your account. If you have a technical query or you do not yet have a GRESB representative for your account, please reach out to our member success team at [email protected] or through our contact form.
Tackling those queries in advance will ensure a smooth reporting process and allow you to clarify any questions you may have. You can expect to receive a thorough response from our dedicated team of experts within two working days.
5. Log in to the GRESB Portal
On April 1, you can log into the Portal to start your Assessment. Current users can log in using their existing account details. If you have not previously reported to GRESB, please create an account.
Once logged in, you will be asked to choose which Assessment and Components you are reporting. You will also be asked to provide the name of the reporting entity and your intent to submit. This information will be visible to GRESB Investor Members, who can track reporting progress.
6. Review the Assessment indicators and refer to the guidance in the Portal
As you run through the indicators and review the guidance for each, it makes sense to place the indicators into the following categories:
- Indicators for which you can provide identical answers for several entities
- Indicators that you can answer immediately
- Indicators that are more time-consuming to answer
- Indicators that require involvement from other employees from your organization or external consultants
This guidance is also provided in the GRESB Guides and under the first point above. Please note that GRESB has developed the Template Tool to help reduce the reporting burden. The Template Tool allows you to apply the same answers across multiple Assessments, without having to do so individually (i.e., per reporting entity). It is available for both the Real Estate and Infrastructure Assessments.
7. Aim to complete your Assessment response by June 1
Your Assessment response should include all document uploads and required hyperlinks. Completing your response before June 1 will give you plenty of time to check that all required information has been included, arrange for internal approvals, and implement any changes should you choose to take advantage of the Pre-Submission Check service prior to submitting your Assessment.
Once you have obtained internal approval to submit your Assessment, you will need to formally submit your response in the Portal.
The deadline for submission is July 1 at 23:59 PDT.
First-year participants can opt out of allowing GRESB Investors Members—or Fund Managers, in the case of the Infrastructure Asset Assessment —to request access to their data and GRESB results. This is referred to as the Grace Period.
8. Review your preliminary GRESB Results
In light of the GRESB Assessments timeline, your preliminary individual GRESB Results will be available in the Portal on September 1. During the Review Period, you will be able to submit an Assessment Correction request to GRESB through our Portal by using a dedicated form.
The final results will be released to both participants and investor members on October 1. Please note that preliminary results are subject to change. Only results released on October 1 are considered final.
9. Review your final Assessment results
Following the GRESB Assessments timeline, the final GRESB results will be available in the Portal on October 1 in the form of a GRESB Benchmark Report.
The Benchmark Report includes a comprehensive analysis of your sustainability performance, providing the basis for competitive analysis and communication. It begins with a scorecard and is followed by an indicator-by-indicator breakdown of your performance and how this compares against your peers. The report is designed to help you identify areas of risk and opportunity, make informed decisions, and deepen your engagement with investors.
All participants who would like to receive an in-depth review of their GRESB results can request a Results Performance Review, which will allow them to explore areas of opportunity for further improvement.
10. Communicate your results to investors and stakeholders
Your GRESB results provide you with a practical way to understand your performance and communicate that performance to investors.
The key to analyzing GRESB data is in peer-group comparisons that take into account country, regional, sectoral, and investment type variations. This rich analysis will enable you to understand your results in the context of your investment strategies and communicate this to investors.
Use peer benchmarks (region, sector, strategy, entity type) to turn results and insights into an investment narrative: where you lead, where you lag, and how that ties to risk, resilience, and value creation.
This narrative will be even more important in 2026. A recent GRESB–MIPIM sentiment survey confirms that sustainability remains central for most firms, with many planning to increase their efforts in the year ahead. Investor and lender requirements continue to be the primary driver. The survey also identifies climate risk and shifts in occupier demand as the most significant perceived threats to asset values—underscoring the importance of clear, credible results communication in the investment decision-making process.
We hope that this step-by-step guide will help you prepare for this year’s GRESB Assessments. For any questions, please contact us.
