2026 GRESB Real Estate Standard updates!
Each year the GRESB Standards evolve to reflect industry progress and ensure that sustainability data is consistent, comparable and decision-useful. The 2026 GRESB Real Estate Standard builds on this foundation with updates that:
- strengthen incentives for meaningful action in key impact areas;
- enhance clarity, technical robustness, and sector relevance; and
- streamline reporting by retiring select indicators and clarifying guidance.
These updates follow the multi-year roadmap developed through the GRESB Foundation, ensuring changes are predictable, transparent and led by the industry. They also represent an important step toward the Foundation’s longer-term vision for the GRESB Standards and the transition toward rewarding measured, real-world performance. More information on this evolution will be shared in the forthcoming 2026 GRESB Foundation Roadmap, followed by a public consultation in 2026.
In November, GRESB will release the 2026 Simulated Scores report to help participants anticipate the potential impact of the 2026 Standards Updates. The report will provide purely illustrative performance trends based on responses from the 2025 GRESB Real Estate Assessment. Stay tuned for more details!
So, what’s new?
This year the updates are organized into five categories:
- General Standard updates
- Embodied carbon: Scored recognition for upfront carbon measurement and transparency
- Net zero: Improved format strengthening credibility and promoting interoperability with other industry frameworks
- Indicator retirement and weighting adjustments: Retirement of indicators and adjustment of weights to elevate performance expectations
- Building certifications: Revised implementation timeline of previously announced update, in alignment with targeted major changes in the GRESB Standard
- Technical refinements
- GHG Scope reclassification: Improved alignment with key industry frameworks, eliminating reconciliation issues and restoring appropriate incentives
- Ownership period: Improved accuracy in aggregation model results through better incorporation of ownership periods
- Guidance clarification
- Estimation methodology: Clarified guidelines for data estimation to ensure consistent
- Other minor updates
- Renewable energy: New options accommodating specific renewable procurement scenarios made available
- Human capital: New option for non-binary identity
- Residential-specific updates
- Local infrastructure: Improved design enabling more flexible reporting scenarios
- Lease contracts: Revised indicator statement to eliminate ambiguity in requirements
We have summarised the key topics below, using the executive summary table provided by GRESB with an overview of all 2026 Standard updates and their impacts on reporting and scoring. Reporting impact refers to a change in data input. Scoring impact refers to a change in criteria or interpretation impacting an entity’s score.
Example of Standard Updates | Embodied carbon
Embodied carbon represents a very significant portion of a building’s whole life cycle footprint. As a result, this topic has been a key focus for the GRESB Foundation in recent years, leading to a series of developments for the Standard across multiple years.
In line with the Standard’s strategic direction towards performance-based scoring, the GRESB Foundation approved a shift from portfolio-level to asset-level reporting for upfront carbon emissions starting in 2027. This change is intended to ensure that quantitative measurements are assessed within their appropriate context (e.g. sector, location), enabling more accurate performance evaluation and reward in subsequent versions of the Standard. This shift is intended to be implemented through the introduction of four new data entry fields at the asset level, including:
- Scope of upfront carbon measurement
- Upfront carbon emission value
- Percentage of EPDs coverage (or equivalent)
- Any upfront carbon offsets (optional)
An overview of all embodied carbon-related updates is provided in the table below:
With regard to Indicator DMA2, the introduction of scoring weight was announced last year here and is now confirmed as 5 points: 3 for measurement (based on % of measured projects) and 2 for disclosure (validated manually). Participants must upload relevant evidence to support embodied carbon disclosure, as per the screenshot below:
Example of technical refinements | Reclassification of GHG Scope
We believe that one of the key changes implemented by GRESB is the reclassification of GHG emissions from landlord-controlled tenant spaces to Scopes 1-2 to align with the GHG Protocol and eliminate framework reconciliation issues.
Historically the GRESB Standard used to classify GHG emissions from energy used in landlord-controlled tenant spaces as Scope 3. This classification was based on the location of energy consumption (within tenant-dedicated areas) and diverges from the GHG Protocol’s operational control approach, which attributes emissions based on who has the authority to introduce and implement operating policies.
This misalignment has caused confusion among members and required participants to reconcile differing scope treatments across frameworks.
The 2026 Standard reclassifies GHG emissions from landlord-controlled tenant spaces as Scopes 1-2 and updates the reporting guidance and validation checks accordingly.
This update improves alignment with the GHG Protocol, restores appropriate incentives, and removes the need for reconciliation work across frameworks.
Although the vast majority of assets are not impacted by this update, as they do not include any energy consumption within landlord-controlled tenant spaces, a small proportion of operational assets (~3.1%) will be required to reclassify relevant GHG emissions from Scope 3 to Scopes 1-2 as part of their 2026 reporting, for both the current and previous reporting years.
Going forward, this reclassification removes the need for unnecessary reconciliation work across frameworks (e.g. CDP, PCAF, EPRA). Given the specific and limited scope of this update, GRESB plans targeted outreach to the relevant
stakeholders as part of its external communication, as follows:
- Q4 2025: Participant Members affected by this reclassification, to help them prepare for their 2026 GRESB reporting.
- Q2 2026: Investor Members with access to the affected entities, to inform them of the reclassification reflected in the 2026 GRESB outputs.
The expected impact on participants’ scores in the Standing Investments Benchmark ranges between -2 points and 2 points, with an average increase of ~0.2 points. The scoring impact is confined to a small portion of all assets reported
Summary of all Updates and Impact Analysis for the three Real Estate Components
The tables below provide an comprehensive overview of all updates to the 2026 Standard for the Management, Performance and Development Components. No updates are currently planned for the 2027 Standard; however, this may be subject to change prior to the publication of the final 2027 Standard Updates document expected in Q4 2026.
GRESB has also released an official Real Estate Standard 2026 Updates Summary Table, a document saved here.
Reach out to our team of certified GRESB Accredited Professionals (APs) to continue the conversation – we would love to help!
For detailed information on each change and should you have any questions in preparation for your 2026 submissions, feel free to contact one of our three GRESB APs at info@esgsolutionsltd.com.
