Rebuilding Ukraine could be top European investment theme of 2026

LONDON: The eyes of the world have been glued to the twists and turns of the ongoing talks to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but the real story for investors is what comes after. If U.S. President Donald Trump is successful in pushing through a truce, a massive reconstruction boom could begin almost immediately.

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Rebuilding Ukraine could cost US$524B over a decade, mainly funded by EU and private investors.
Key sectors for investment include energy infrastructure, housing, and transport.
European firms like Wienerberger and Strabag may benefit, while renewable energy remains a top priority for resilience.

Hardly a day passes without a new headline on the tug of war between the major parties in the ceasefire negotiations. Trump wants to end the conflict quickly, on almost any terms, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin looks to turn a battlefield stalemate into a win, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy continues to fight for territorial integrity while his European allies seek to contain the broader Russian threat to the continent.

Yet, amid all this coverage, little ink has been spilt on the investment needs of Ukraine if a ceasefire is reached.

Ukraine's civil infrastructure and economy have been severely damaged over the past four years. In November, the World Bank began its latest annual assessment of the destruction and will present its findings next month. Its estimate at the end of 2024 put direct physical damage at $176 billion, with up to $589 billion more for economic damage from lost output and increased costs. Following another year of war, the numbers will only be higher.

Rebuilding is expected to cost around $524 billion over the next decade, and it will likely be financed mainly by the European Union and the private sector. Brussels has signalled that, in exchange for its support, it expects European companies to win the bulk of rebuilding contracts. Washington is likely to attach similar conditions, steering any money invested in Ukraine’s reconstruction back toward U.S. contractors.

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Putting aside the over $140 billion that private Ukrainian businesses are expected to invest using funds from donor nations, international investment will likely be concentrated in three sectors: energy infrastructure, housing, and transport infrastructure.

Reconstruction of Ukraine's energy system has already begun, with efforts focused on repairing the power grid and building new wind and solar farms.

Ukraine will likely seek to make its energy system more resilient, given that the country will remain vulnerable to future Russian aggression. Kyiv may therefore increase its focus on decentralised renewable technologies. A single Russian attack can take out a nuclear or gas-fired power plant that supplies a large portion of the country's energy. But if Russia wants to destroy similar wind and solar capacity, it would need to destroy dozens of sites.

Companies that build renewable energy infrastructure thus could be the early winners of a ceasefire in Ukraine. However, many European cement companies like Heidelberg Materials or Holcim and manufacturers of wind and solar power equipment like Siemens Energy got a large boost in 2025 from Germany's infrastructure spending plans, meaning their valuations have already jumped.

Indeed, companies in these sectors make up a large part of the UBS Ukraine reconstruction index, which was up more than 50% in 2025.

However, other European companies with valuations below the heavyweight components of the UBS index are poised to take advantage of the rebuilding opportunity.

For example, Austria's Wienerberger makes everything from bricks to water pipes and operates factories close to Ukraine in Poland and Hungary. It could potentially become a major supplier not just for water infrastructure, but also for housing reconstruction in Eastern Ukraine.

Austria’s largest construction company, Strabag, is also well situated. Its core competency is building roads, bridges, and railway tracks, and, importantly, it operated in Ukraine until 2018.

It had to exit because it was classified as a Russian company, given oligarch Oleg Deripaska's 25% ownership stake. But since 2018, the company has taken steps to reduce his shareholding and stands ready to re-enter the country.

Strabag has outperformed the UBS index over the past year but has faster earnings growth and a lower valuation than many of the biggest companies in the index.

There is, of course, no guarantee that a ceasefire agreement will be reached and it remains unclear what exactly the post-war business environment in Ukraine will look like.

But as investors in 2026 start to focus more on "the day after" in Ukraine, reconstruction themes are likely to move centre stage.

The views expressed here are those of Joachim Klement, an investment strategist for Panmure Liberum/ via Reuters