09/02/2026

Kearney releases the Circular Fashion Index 2026 (9/2/26)

Global management consulting firm Kearney today released its sixth annual Circular Fashion Index report (CFX 2026), which benchmarks how fashion brands put circularity into practice across the product life cycle. The 2026 Index assesses 241 brands across 21 countries and five product categories, evaluating performance in nine dimensions spanning materials and design through care, repair, secondhand, rental, and post-use recovery. As regulation advances, circularity is becoming a license to operate rather than a voluntary initiative. CFX 2026 confirms this shift in adoption: the industry average score climbed to 3.7 out of 10, up from 3.4 in 2025 and around 2.0 in 2020. Yet deep execution is rare: across core primary-market dimensions, only 3 to 7 percent of brands show extensive implementation, while roughly three-quarters sit at moderate activation. The CFX 2026 report finds several key patterns in this year’s data: The baseline rises, but the execution gap is wide. The top tier is far ahead of the bottom 80 percent, and nine of the top 10 brands were also in last year’s leading group. The right model differs by category. Outdoor leads overall, while sports and premium/affordable luxury also show relatively stronger maturity, reflecting different product use cases and economics, along with different opportunities to create value. Service-based models remain selective. Repair, resale, and especially rental depend more directly on consumer demand, and they require viable economics and the ability to operate them in order to scale. “Building circular capabilities and capturing value from them are two different things,” said Maria Pereira, partner and co-author of the report. “The next leaders will be those who make better choices about where circularity can genuinely improve economics, from reducing excess and securing material supply to extending product life and improving recovery. The right answer will differ by product, category, and customer proposition. These decisions need to be brought to the functions where business trade-offs are made and considered as part of normal planning, investment, and performance management.” Kearney’s analysis points to four management shifts that separate the brands that are capturing real value from circularity from those that are simply complying: • Build a reusable product record that supports compliance as well as product development, sourcing, consumer service, and post-use decisions. • Integrate circular decisions across core business functions, bringing commercial, sourcing, finance, and operations into relevant trade-offs and investment decisions. • Build partner models with clear ownership and accountability across the value chain. • Use broader product economics to shape portfolio priorities, considering inventory exposure, material-supply risk, and residual or recovery value alongside first-sale margin. The next phase will be determined less by how many circular initiatives brands add and more by how effectively they use the capabilities they are already building to improve portfolio economics and environmental outcomes.