Europe and Middle East to lead growth

Europe and the Middle East are set to lead global onshore wind growth in 2026, as capacity additions reach 142 gigawatts (GW), up 1% year on year. China maintains stable momentum, supported by grid upgrades, storage integration, and the transition to the 15th Five-Year Plan, while Asia-Pacific outside China grows steadily, led by India, Laos, and Japan.

The US will see a near-term peak of 8.1 GW as developers accelerate projects to secure expiring tax credits. In Europe, Germany drives record growth with 7.7 GW coming online, and landmark Saudi projects propel Middle East expansion, offsetting moderation in South America following last year’s peak.

Pivotal year ahead

The value pool is shifting from turbine price to system economics. Developers are prioritizing realized revenues over lowest turbine capex, screening technologies against grid congestion, negative pricing exposure, and curtailment risk in high-penetration markets.

A battery energy storage system (BESS) is moving from “nice-to-have” to a core enabler of buildout. Falling storage costs and tightening system constraints are accelerating co-located wind and storage, led by China and increasingly replicated across Europe and North America to shape output and protect capture prices.

Winning projects will be defined also by integration capabilities. Policy and market design in Europe, North America, and China is increasingly rewarding flexibility and reliability (integration capabilities) over pure levelized cost of energy (LCOE), raising the bar on grid services, controllability, and dispatch alignment.

Wind OEM strategy is broadening from products to solutions. Several OEMs are expanding into adjacent offerings, such as storage and hybrid configurations, signaling a move toward end-to-end system value and differentiated performance rather than commodity turbine competition.

Supply chains are becoming a strategic battleground, and de-risking and localization are accelerating across blocs:

• US: Foreign entity of concern (FEOC) rules and investment barriers constrain China-linked influence.

• India: Localization aims to reduce dependency while building export leverage.

• Europe: Non-price criteria shifts procurement toward resilience/local content.

• China: 15th Five-Year Plan pushes localization to reduce reliance on imported critical components.

China and Western OEMs

Chinese OEMs are entering a 2026 profit-recovery cycle. Strong domestic demand, a turbine price rebound, and faster overseas expansion should partly reverse recent margin erosion from oversupply and hyper-competition.

Global competition is bifurcating. Outside China, Europe, and North America, Chinese players are using structurally lower cost bases to price aggressively and scale share most visibly across the rest of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Internationalization is accelerating and getting “local.” Firm orders increased meaningfully in 2024 and 2025, and Chinese OEMs are reinforcing competitiveness via local manufacturing footprints, workforce buildout, and partnerships in markets where local content matters.

Western OEMs are still prioritizing margin over volume. Price increases through 2024-2025, despite easing input costs, signal a strategic exit from price wars to protect profitability. The trade-off is clear: margin stabilization, but constrained growth. Western OEM margins are stabilizing, yet order intake trends point to continued market-share leakage outside core strongholds. Near-term margin upside looks incremental, while volume growth remains capped.

Technology becomes the defining battleground for OEMs

The onshore wind sector is pivoting from cost/volume to value creation. Turbine price still matters, but differentiation is shifting to reliability, digitalization, service depth, and grid-integration performance that improves lifetime project economics.

Integrated solutions are becoming the new “table stakes.” BESS, hybrids, and smart energy platforms, often delivered with partners, are enabling developers to prioritize flexibility, curtailment mitigation, and revenue protection over headline LCOE.

This year is shaping up as the monetization inflection point. Storage scale-up and grid modernization should unlock system-level value pools (price-shaping, congestion/curtailment mitigation, ancillary services), with early bundled commercial offerings emerging as proof points.

The strategic implication for OEMs is to expand from hardware to platforms. Winners will move beyond standalone turbines into hybrid systems, storage-enabled offerings, predictive maintenance, and AI-driven optimization, capturing margin in software, services, and performance guarantees.

China is accelerating from “scale” to “quality” and consolidating. Competitive intensity is raising the premium on clear innovation roadmaps and scalable technology, driving share gains for leaders and exits among weaker players.

Concentration is already visible. By end-2024, the top six Chinese OEMs reached 84% of installed capacity, up 17 percentage points versus 2020, with leaders such as Goldwind and Envision leveraging scale and vertical integration for cost reduction. Smaller OEMs have been exiting since 2024.

Turbine ratings growth set to moderate

Chinese OEMs currently lead on turbine size. Strong domestic demand and rapid product development have enabled a broad portfolio with a high share of high‑capacity models, keeping China at the global forefront of onshore turbine ratings.

Western OEMs trail on new product introductions. Despite lower research and development constraints, average megawatt ratings for newly launched Western machines have lagged Chinese peers since 2021.

Growth in turbine scale is slowing. Market incentives and site constraints are moderating the pace of new product launches for both Chinese and Western OEMs, particularly in Europe, where transport and permitting limit the adoption of very large machines.

International expansion will shape the next phase. As Chinese OEMs increase overseas penetration, especially in the Middle East, they are introducing higher-capacity turbines beyond traditional Western offerings, gradually accelerating the global increase in average turbine ratings.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or beliefs of Rystad Energy. 

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