Global R&D Trends 2026

Biopharmaceutical R&D remained resilient in 2025, with investment and dealmaking increasingly concentrated in high value science, emerging biopharma, and China linked activity, according to a new report from IQVIA.

At the same time, growing scientific complexity, longer development timelines, and persistent regional disparities in drug availability and trial country utilization have put pressure on productivity, elevating the importance of internal efficiency levers and regulatory reform in sustaining and enhancing innovation and competitiveness. Although end-to-end clinical development timelines have increased, reversing the improvements of recent years, emerging developments in artificial  intelligence-enabled discovery and development offer a tantalizing glimpse of a future in which reduced pipeline attrition dramatically improves R&D productivity.