New securities class action lawsuits in the first half of 2026 were filed at a pace that projects to a year-end total number of filings ahead of both 2025’s full-year total and long-term year-end averages.
Number of Filings: According to our tally, there were 118 federal court securities class action lawsuit filings in the year’s first six months. (Please note that the figures discussed in this blog post do not include state court securities class action lawsuit filings.) The first-half filings, if annualized for the full twelve months of the year, suggest a year-end total of 236, ahead of both the 207 securities suit filings in 2025 and the 1997-2024 annual average of 227. The 118 filings total in the first half of 2026 is also ahead of the 111 filings in the first half of 2025.
AI-Related Cases: Certain factors that have contributed significantly to the number of filings in recent years were also factors in the number of filings in the first half of 2026. For example, there were 13 Artificial Intelligence (AI)-related securities suit filings in the first six months of 2026, compared to 14 AI-related filings for the full year of 2025. The increased pace of AI-related filings in the first half of 2026 may be one of the factors accounting for the overall increased filing pace in the year’s first six months compared to the equivalent period a year ago.
Stock Manipulation Cases: Another filing type that was a contributing factor to the overall number of filings in 2025 also continued in the first half of 2026, involving various types of stock manipulation allegations.
In the year’s first six months, there were six securities class action lawsuits that alleged classic pump-and-dump schemes. These cases focus on thinly traded, low-float companies. The cases generally allege that the defendant directors and officers orchestrated, or failed to disclose, promotional campaigns, often amplified through social media, that artificially inflated the companies’ share prices. Insiders or their affiliates then allegedly sold their holdings ahead of later share price declines.
In addition to the pump-and-dump filings, there were also three additional cases in the year’s first half involving alleged stock promotion schemes. There was also an additional case filed in late June against an investment firm, alleging the firm had engaged in “spoofing” (fictitious stock purchase orders) to drive up the share price of a thinly traded public company. In several of the stock promotion cases, the promoters seeking to drive up the target firm’s share price allegedly used AI-generated content to drum up interest in the firm. Overall, there were ten securities suit filings in the year’s first half involving stock manipulation allegations, which also seems to have been a factor in the increase in the number of filings in the first six months of the year.
Industries Targeted: The securities suits filed in the first half of 2026 were filed against companies in a wide variety of industries. The 1H26 securities suits were filed against companies in 64 SIC Code categories. The SIC Code category with the highest number of first half 2026 federal court securities class action lawsuits was SIC Code Category 7372 (Prepackaged Software), which had 16 securities suit filings. The category with the next highest number of first half filings was SIC Code Category 2834 (Pharmaceutical Preparations), followed by SIC Code Category 2836 (Biological Products), which had eight first half filings.
Two industry groups that stood out in particular for the number of first half filings. Industry Group 283 (Drugs) had a total of 19 first half 2026 filings, representing about 16% of all first-half 2026 filings. Industry Group 737 (Computer Programming and Data Processing) had a total of 17 first-half 2026 filings, representing about 14% of all first-half 2026 filings. These two industry groups together accounted for 36 first-half 2026 filings, or nearly 31% of all first half 2026 filings.
Place of Filing: The first-half 2026 federal court securities class action lawsuit filings were filed in a number of different federal district courts; by our count, securities suits were first-filed in a total of 27 different federal district courts during the year’s first half. The federal district court with the most first-filed securities class action lawsuits in the first half of 2026 was the Southern District of New York, which had 36 securities suit filings in the first six months of the year. The federal court with the next highest number of first-filed securities suits in 1H26 was the Northern District of California, which had 20 first half 2026 filings, followed by the District of New Jersey, which had nine first half 2026 filings.
The federal courts in the states of New York and California, taken collectively, saw a significant percentage of the total number of first-filed securities suits in the first half of 2026. The various federal district courts in the state of New York had a total of 42 of the first-filed securities suits in the first half of 2026. The various federal district courts in the state of California had a total of 30 of the first-filed lawsuits in the first six months of 2026. The federal district courts in these two states taken together accounted for 72 of the first-filed securities suits filed in the first six months of 2026, representing more than 61% of all first half 2026 securities suit filings.
In prior years, merger objection class action lawsuits were a significant factor in the overall number of federal court securities suit filings. However, in the first six months of 2026, class action merger objection lawsuit filings were barely a factor; by our tally, there was only one federal court class action merger objection lawsuit in the first half of 2026. (Please note that the merger objection lawsuits are still being filed in significant numbers, but they are being filed as individual actions rather than as class actions, and so they do not show up in the class action lawsuit filing statistics.)
Of the 118 first half 2026 federal court securities class action lawsuit filings, 21 involved non-U.S. defendant companies, representing nearly 18% of all first half filings. The 21 suits involved companies from nine different countries, with two of the suits filed against companies based in Hong Kong. The country with the highest number of suits is China, with four (and two more suits against Hong Kong companies); Israel with three, the Netherlands with three, and Singapore with three. A certain number of these non-U.S. companies were the subject of or target of some of the stock manipulation lawsuits described above.
Among the first half 2026 securities suit filings were nine cases against IPO companies. The IPO companies named as defendants completed their IPOs in 2024 (one company); 2025 (seven companies); and 2026 (one company).
1H26 Securities Suit Filings Podcast: Keep your eyes out for links to the upcoming D&O Diary podcast discussing the first half securities suit filings.
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