Wildfire exposed catastrophe bond issuance soars to $5.183bn year-to-date in 2026

The catastrophe bond market continues to demonstrate increased comfort with the wildfire peril in 2026, with the amount of risk capital deployed to support cat bonds that have some exposure to wildfire having soared to $5.183 billion year-to-date, already nearing the full-year record of $5.55 billion for the peril seen in 2025.

Since 2022, the catastrophe bond market began to see an acceleration in the amount of risk capital deployed to transactions that are exposed to wildfire risks.

The total for cat bond issuance that carries some level of exposure to wildfire risks reached $2.57 billion in 2023, then rose further to $2.84 billion in 2024.

Then, the pace of wildfire exposed cat bond issuance accelerated in 2025 to a record high of $5.55 billion.

This accelerated pace of issuance has now continued into 2026, with already $5.183 billion of catastrophe bonds having settled in the market that carry an element of exposure to the wildfire peril.

That total comes from 20 individual cat bond series issued in the first-half 2026 pipeline, including a couple of mid-year deals that settled in early July.

This already equals the 20 issuances of wildfire exposed cat bonds that we analysed and tracked in full-year 2025.

The majority of the wildfire exposed cat bond limit issued comes from multi-peril issuances, which is typical of any year, where the wildfire peril is one of those covered under the terms of a transaction.

You can see the rapid growth in wildfire exposure within catastrophe bond issuance in the chart below:

While the inclusion of wildfire as a peril in multi-peril cat bond deals has been increasing at pace, issuance of pure wildfire cat bonds has also been rising.

In 2026 so far we have already seen 3 of these in 144A format, running only 1 deal behind the 4 pure wildfire cat bonds seen in full-year 2025 (which was the most of any year in the market’s history).

As a result, the cat bond market is supporting increasing volumes of wildfire exposed and wildfire focused reinsurance capacity, which is welcome support for insurers and policyholders in areas such as California where the peril remains a significant threat to properties and livelihoods.

This is happening thanks to growing familiarity with the wildfire peril and confidence in the risk models, as well as the prudent structures that have emerged in the insurance-linked securities market so far.

It’s helping to build investor confidence in deploying capital to wildfire exposed catastrophe bonds, which is helping to raise the wildfire peril to become a more meaningful component of the overall cat bond marketplace.

Reinsurance broker Acrisure Re recently explained that ongoing refinements in pricing and coverage through lessons learned from each new fire season is also helping to boost the ability of the cat bond market to assume more wildfire risks.

While the broker also stated that the impact of improved risk models for the wildfire peril is having a “profound” effect on investor appetite.

View details of every pure wildfire catastrophe bond ever issued in our Deal Directory by filtering the list by peril.