GRESB 2025 Sector Leaders and Top Performers

The GRESB Sector Leader Program recognizes leadership shown through the Assessments and incentivizes improvement among participants. In addition, each year GRESB publishes an online Assessment participant list and provides GRESB Rating logos and other marketing resources to support participants in communicating their results.

Towards a broader recognition of leadership

The following concerns have been raised about the Sector Leader Program, which recognizes the best performers annually in the GRESB Assessments, based on their absolute GRESB Score:

• Narrow definition of what constitutes leadership that is based on one metric – overall GRESB Score – when there are many leadership examples that can be recognized.
• Arbitrary in cases where the difference between the entity with the highest GRESB Score and the second highest is only a couple of decimal points.
• Winner takes all methodology that is too tightly focused on being the “best” rather than recognizing entities that are getting “better” or showing “very good” performance.

In order to respond to these concerns, and to improve the online participant lists and marketing resources for participants, we propose a new approach to recognizing leadership – one that distinguishes a broader range of behaviors and performance in the market.

The new approach includes the following recognitions:

1. GRESB Sector Leaders

This recognition is based on the GRESB Score but recognizes the highest scoring entities per sector/region/nature of ownership rather than just the single very best performing entity per category. The Sector Leader awards are selected based on the following criteria:

• Categories are unique combinations of sector, region and nature of ownership. Each category requires a minimum of 6 entities.
• Sector Leaders are determined for each region (Regional Sector Leaders) and globally (Global Sector Leaders), taking legal status into account. It is possible for the same entity to be recognized as both a Regional Sector Leader and a Global Sector Leader. Within each region, we need a minimum of 6 listed and 6 non-listed entities in order to assign Sector Leaders. If we do not have 6 entities within each sector, we disregard the legal status. If fewer than 6 entities remain within a sector, we do not assign a Sector Leader for that region.
• The entity with the top score, as well as the entities with a score within 1 point of the top score in a category will be recognized as Sector Leaders.
• The consequence of this approach is that some categories will have a single Sector Leader, while other categories will have multiple.

Example: If the top score in Office, Americas, Listed is 96.0000, all entities with a score above 95.0000 will also be recognized as Sector Leaders in this category. If the second highest score registered in this category is 94.9999, GRESB will only recognize one Sector Leader – the entity with a score of 96.0000. For the purposes of this analysis, GRESB will use scores rounded to the fourth decimal.

2. GRESB 5 Star Rated

The GRESB Rating is based on the GRESB Score and the quintile position an entity occupies relative to all entities participating in the GRESB Assessment. If an entity is placed in the top quintile, it is recognized as a GRESB 5 Star rated entity. If it ranks in the bottom quintile, it is recognized as a GRESB 1 Star rated entity, etc. This means that each year, 20% of entities receive a GRESB 5 Star rating.

We will publicly recognize the achievement of a 5 Star rating. In the case of listed companies and non-listed infrastructure assets, we will disclose the name of the company with a 5 Star rating. In the case of non-listed real estate entities and infrastructure funds, we will disclose the name of the fund manager together with how many of their entities have a 5 star rating.

Certificates and logos

We provide logo-style badges for each of the recognitions (ie: 2025 Sector Leader, 2025 GRESB Rating and 2025 GRESB-Score Infrastructure Fund) as well as marketing resources (such as example social media posts and press releases) to support communications.

Public Communication

We notify managers who have received recognitions (GRESB Sector Leaders and GRESB 5 Star Rated) in October with the official release of the 2025 GRESB Results. The listings are then be included on the public website, in press releases and shared with media partners. In the case of Sector Leaders and Top Performer awards, Managers may request that their recognition not be made public.

In the case of listed companies, we will disclose the name of the company. In the case of non-listed entities, we will disclose the name of the fund manager.

All managers and entities will be listed alphabetically and not in the order of the obtained scores. As such, no differentiation is made between the recognized entities.