GRESB is reshaping its Real Estate Standard to focus on performance-driven outcomes & impact

As an investor-led body, the GRESB Foundation governs the Real Estate Standard to ensure it evolves in line with investors’ priorities and the maturity of the market. Increasingly, investors are seeking assurance that their capital generates real-world positive impact and delivers demonstrable performance outcomes. The evolution toward performance-based scoring therefore reflects both market readiness and the growing emphasis on impact and accountability within the investment landscape.

The GRESB Foundation has identified three core principles to guide the Standard’s future evolution to reward performance:

• Alignment between GRESB Scores and real-world outcomes and impact
• Focus on sustainability fundamentals to reduce risk and support long-term value creation
• Enhanced recognition of sustainability leadership and demonstrated excellence

These principles serve as anchor points for the Foundation’s vision of a Standard that accurately captures sustainability performance and drives continuous improvement across the global real estate industry.

In its 2026 Foundation Roadmap, the GRESB Foundation builds on these core principles and outlines their proposal for performance-based scoring in the Standard. It seeks to answer important questions, including:

1. How should performance be defined within the Standard?
2. What share of the total score should performance represent?
3. Over what timeframe and at what pace should this evolution occur?

As an industry-led initiative, the GRESB Foundation highly values stakeholder input in shaping the Road to Performance for the Standard.

A public consultation will therefore be held starting February 2026. Members and stakeholders will be invited to comment on the Road to Performance, including the overall direction of travel, milestones, and implementation strategy.

Feedback will be analyzed by the GRESB Foundation in Q2 2026 and incorporated into the final revision of the Road to Performance, which will guide the official updates to the 2028 Real Estate Standard and beyond.

Further details on the public consultation and how to respond will become available in early 2026. To join the mailing list for the latest updates on the Road to Performance, please complete the form below: