CEE Private Markets 2025: The Mid-Market Is Winning, the Gap Remains
The latest Invest Europe CEE Private Equity Statistics 2025 report is out. Strong exits, a resurgent mid-market, and VC that nearly doubled — but the region's structural gap remains.
The latest Invest Europe data on Central and Eastern Europe tells a story that resists easy headlines. Exits are at their strongest since 2020. Buyout fundraising is at its highest since 2018. Venture capital investment nearly doubled. And yet total investment volumes fell, the number of deals declined, and the region still attracts less than 2% of European private equity capital. CEE private markets in 2025 are neither a recovery story nor a slowdown story — they are a market in structural transition, and the nuances matter.
These are the numbers that will frame the conversations at 0100 Emerging Europe in Budapest on 24 September.
Venture capital: the composition shift is the story
CEE VC investment reached €675 million in 2025 — almost double the previous year’s result. On the surface, that looks like a breakout year. Look closer, and the picture is more specific: the growth was almost entirely driven by later-stage venture, which more than tripled to a record €438 million and accounted for 65% of total VC investment value. Seed and start-up deal counts actually contracted.
This is a meaningful shift. It suggests the top of the CEE VC funnel — early-stage deal flow — is not expanding, while capital is concentrating in a smaller number of more mature companies. Poland produced a single VC deal exceeding €100 million, a country record, and alone accounted for 46% of the region’s total VC investment. Estonia punched well above its weight at €141 million. The rest of the map remains thin.
ICT continues to absorb the overwhelming majority of VC capital at 79% of investment value — a concentration that reflects both the region’s genuine strengths in tech and the relative underdevelopment of other sectors in terms of institutional-grade deal flow.
On exits, VC divestments grew modestly to €51 million from 39 companies. Sale to another PE or VC firm was the dominant route at 52% of value — a pattern that points to a secondary market dynamic within the ecosystem rather than external validation through trade sales or public markets.
Buyout and growth: mid-market takes the wheel
The buyout headline is a tale of two markets. Total buyout investment fell 36% year-on-year to €1.26 billion, but that decline is almost entirely explained by the absence of mega transactions. Strip those out, and mid-market buyouts grew 52% to €780 million across a record 24 companies. That is a meaningful signal about where the durable deal flow in CEE actually sits.
Average transaction size in the mid-market segment ran at €1.18 billion of total transaction value across 12 deals — well within the range that regional and pan-European managers can execute without dependence on the leveraged finance conditions that have constrained larger buyouts across Europe. The equity contribution of PE firms in mid-market deals was 44%, lower than in small buyouts, reflecting more sophisticated capital structures.
Growth capital had a strong year, up 33% to €619 million, making it the third-largest investment category after VC and buyout. The average deal size increased from €5.7 million to €8.5 million — a sign that growth managers are deploying larger cheques into fewer, more selective opportunities.
Poland remains the anchor market at 39% of total investment value and 29% of companies funded. Romania had an exceptional year, nearly quadrupling its investment total to take second place for the first time in four years — driven partly by the region’s single largest transaction in 2025. Estonia and the Czech Republic round out the top four.
Exits: the distribution cycle is open
The exit picture is arguably the most important data point for LPs evaluating the asset class. CEE PE exits reached €1.71 billion in 2025 — up 26% year-on-year and the highest total since 2020’s all-time peak. Critically, this happened while overall European divestment values fell 5%. CEE’s share of European exit value rose to 3.8%, up from 2.8% in 2024.
Trade sales dominated at 61% of exit value, driven by three sizeable transactions. Romania set a country record with €662 million divested — the La Cocoș sale to Schwarz Gruppe and the Diagnostyka IPO in Poland being among the headline transactions illustrating the quality of companies that CEE PE has been building. Public offerings contributed €395 million across four companies. Sale to another PE firm accounted for €128 million.
The exit concentration remains a structural feature of the market: four deals accounted for 46% of total exit value. That is not unusual for a mid-sized regional market, but it does mean LP distributions are lumpy and vintage-sensitive.
The persistent gap
One number that should anchor every conversation in Budapest: CEE private equity investment as a percentage of GDP stands at 0.091% — less than one-fifth of the European average of 0.558%. Estonia is the only CEE country that exceeds the European average. Poland and Romania, the two largest markets, sit at 0.114% and 0.121% respectively.
This gap is both the challenge and the opportunity. The macroeconomic backdrop supports a convergence thesis: CEE GDP per capita has risen from 42% of the EU average in 2011 to 60% in 2025, driven by sustained consumption growth, investment, and export expansion. The region’s economies are deeper, more integrated, and more institutionally mature than they were a decade ago. The private capital infrastructure has not kept pace.
What this means for September
The 2025 data arrives at a moment when the CEE private markets conversation is genuinely more complex than it has been in years. The VC market is maturing but concentrating. The buyout market is healthy at mid-market but absent at the top end. Exit activity is strong but reliant on a handful of transactions. Fundraising is above its historical average but increasingly driven by local capital — CEE-based investors accounted for 56% of funds raised, the highest proportion since 2019 — which raises questions about the depth of the international LP base for the region.
These are exactly the tensions that make for productive conversations between LPs and GPs. 0100 Emerging Europe on 24 September in Budapest brings together up to 400 senior private markets professionals — including LPs, fund managers, and advisors — to work through precisely these questions. The data gives the conversation a sharper edge. The room gives it somewhere to go.
0100 Emerging Europe 2026 takes place on 24 September in Budapest—complimentary access for senior LPs and family offices, subject to verification.