The Gulf is no longer just a source of capital — it is fast becoming a destination for it. Record debt issuance, deepening exchanges, and a wave of economic diversification have turned the region into one of the more compelling stories in emerging markets, drawing international investors who once looked past it entirely.

A record run

Global sukuk issuance reached roughly $291 billion in 2025, up around 14.5% on the year, with the Gulf Cooperation Council accounting for close to half of the global total. Saudi Arabia has been the engine, relying on issuance to fund its ambitions, while exchanges across the region have deepened and IPO activity has picked up. What was once a peripheral market is becoming a core one.

The drivers

Behind the numbers sits a deliberate transformation. Sweeping economic-diversification programmes are pushing Gulf economies beyond oil, and heavy investment in AI and infrastructure — particularly in Saudi Arabia and the UAE — is reshaping their growth profiles. Just as important, foreign-currency sukuk issuance has climbed past $100 billion, a sign that international, non-Islamic investors are increasingly buying in, drawn by the instruments’ asset-backed structures and their alignment with ethical and ESG mandates.

For the global investor

For an investor seeking exposure to a fast-deepening market, the Gulf now offers both conventional and Shariah-compliant instruments across a widening range of issuers — a genuine broadening of the opportunity set, and one especially relevant to investors from and near the region. The caveats are real: the Gulf remains sensitive to oil prices and regional geopolitics, and some analysts expect the pace of Islamic-finance growth to moderate in the near term as those tensions weigh on the outlook. But the structural direction — deeper, broader, more open markets — is clear.

For years, “emerging markets” was shorthand for a handful of giants. That map is being redrawn. A new wave of economies — some graduating from frontier status, others reshaped by shifting global supply chains — is drawing serious investor attention, and the opportunity set is wider than it has been in a generation.

A widening universe

The clearest signal is Vietnam, set to be upgraded from frontier to secondary emerging-market status in a major index reclassification — a milestone expected to draw significant institutional inflows. It is not alone. Indonesia, India, and others are posting robust growth, while a broad rewiring of global manufacturing is transferring export momentum to new hubs, particularly Mexico, Vietnam, and Bangladesh, as companies diversify their supply chains.

Why now

Several structural forces are converging at once:

• Supply-chain diversification. Near-shoring and friend-shoring are moving factories and jobs toward a wider set of economies.
• Demographics. Young, growing, increasingly urban populations across South and Southeast Asia and Africa are expanding both labour forces and consumer markets.
• Reform and stability. Many emerging economies now carry stronger institutions, more fiscal discipline, and lower debt burdens than in past cycles.
• The AI cycle, absorbed. Economies that can adopt new technology efficiently stand to gain in productivity and long-run growth.

The mismatch at the heart of it all is striking: emerging markets represent roughly 40% of global output, yet only around a tenth of the world’s equity index — a gap that, over time, has room to close.

The access gap

Here lies the catch that has long frustrated investors. Many of the most compelling companies in these economies trade only on their local exchanges, historically difficult to reach for anyone without native market access. The opportunity has never been the problem; the barrier has been the plumbing. Removing that barrier — offering a regulated route into markets that were once effectively closed — is exactly the gap a global platform exists to fill.

A measured view

None of this comes without risk. Higher growth travels with higher volatility, thinner liquidity in smaller markets, currency swings, and governance questions that vary widely by country. The sensible response is not to avoid these markets but to hold them the way any asset class should be held — diversified, sized to your risk tolerance, and with a long horizon.

For much of the past decade, the story of global investing had a familiar shape: US megacaps led, and everything else followed. In 2025, that script was interrupted. Emerging-market equities finished the year up 33.6%, according to MSCI index data — comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 17.9% and the 21.6% return of the MSCI World. It was the asset class’s strongest year against developed markets since 2017.

For a platform built to give investors access to markets beyond the traditional hubs, this is more than a statistic. It is a reminder that a great deal of the world’s growth — and, in this cycle, a great deal of the world’s returns — happens outside the handful of exchanges that dominate the headlines. Below, we look at what powered the run, and, just as importantly, where the risks now lie.

What drove the outperformance

No single factor explains a move this broad. Instead, several tailwinds arrived at once — a combination that is worth understanding, because it also tells you what would need to persist for the trend to continue.

• A softer US dollar. When the dollar weakens, capital tends to rotate toward emerging markets, and local returns translate more favourably for global investors. EM currencies strengthened notably through 2025, amplifying equity gains.
• Light positioning. After years of underweighting the asset class, many global investors held relatively little EM exposure. As sentiment turned, even modest inflows had an outsized effect on prices.
• Faster earnings growth. Corporate earnings in emerging markets are expected to grow more quickly than in developed markets — consensus estimates point to roughly 21% EM earnings growth, ahead of the US and other developed regions.
• The AI cycle, spreading outward. The artificial-intelligence investment boom is no longer purely a US phenomenon. Its benefits have begun reaching economies such as India, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, where governments are actively investing in AI infrastructure.

What makes this mix notable is that it is not built on a single fragile catalyst. A weaker dollar, cheap starting valuations, and stronger earnings are the kind of durable, fundamental drivers that can support a multi-year re-rating rather than a brief spike.

The access lens

For an investor in a developing economy, there is a particular irony worth naming: the markets that outperformed in 2025 are often the very ones closest to home, yet historically the hardest to invest in professionally. Access has been the missing piece — not opportunity.

That is the gap platforms like Dostor exist to close. When a global-quality, regulated route into these markets becomes available, the investor gains exposure not only to distant developed markets but to the growth stories they may understand better than anyone: their own region’s champions, sectors, and structural trends. Diversification, in that framing, is not about reaching far away — it is about being able to hold the full breadth of the world’s opportunities, including the ones nearby.

The case for caution

A strong year is not a promise of the next one, and honesty about risk is part of investing well. Three cautions stand out as 2026 unfolds.

• Concentration. Both developed and emerging-market gains have leaned heavily on a narrow set of companies tied to AI spending. Narrow leadership means that if those names stumble, the index feels it disproportionately.
• Valuations. After a powerful run, parts of the market are no longer cheap. Rich starting valuations leave less room for error and can amplify pullbacks.
• Geopolitics. Emerging markets remain sensitive to regional tensions, trade policy, and currency swings — sources of volatility that can arrive quickly and without much warning.

None of this argues against emerging-market exposure. It argues for holding it the way any serious investor holds any asset class: as one considered part of a diversified, long-horizon portfolio, sized to a risk level you can live with through the inevitable rough patches.

Looking ahead

Emerging markets entered 2026 with momentum intact, rising in the early part of the year, and with the structural case — a softer dollar, an earnings catch-up, and the widening reach of the AI cycle — still broadly in place. Whether the outperformance persists will depend on how those forces evolve, and no one can promise they will.

What we can say is this: 2025 was a useful reminder that the centre of gravity in global markets is less fixed than it sometimes appears. For investors who have spent years locked out of these markets, the more important shift may not be any single year’s return, but the fact that access itself is finally within reach.