Investment banks may hire record graduates in 2026. Getting a job will be harder than ever

The latest Graduate Market in 2026 report from research firm High Fliers says investment banks in the UK are planning to recruit 2,365 graduates next year, up from the 2,069 graduates they actually hired in 2025.

If all goes to plan, this could make 2026 one of the best years for graduate hiring for a while. In the nadir of 2021, investment banks were only targeting 1,640 hires in the UK.  This year, their aspirations are 26% above that.

Unfortunately, none of this means that jobs in banking will be any easier to come by. Martin Birchall, managing director of High Fliers, notes that the increase in graduate hiring by UK banks has coincided with a decrease in graduate hiring elsewhere.

"The biggest drop over the last three years has been at the accounting and professional service firms. Over three years they are down by about a third relative to where they were in 2022 and 2023," says Birchall.

The average student now makes 22 job applications but only 25% of them get jobs before leaving university, says Birchall. This means that each cohort of new graduates is up against the unsuccessful graduates from previous years. "You now have three cohorts competing for the same jobs," Birchall observes.

Faced with such harsh conditions, Birchall says students are applying for jobs across the board. "Students aren't thinking what is my ideal career I'll just apply for that," he says. AI is turbocharging mass applications. This is seemingly why banks are registering record high applications and record low acceptance rates globally.

Birchall says banks' appetite for more graduate hires in 2026 is down to a strong year last year and to wariness about "gaps in talent 3-5 years down the line."

So far, he says there's been no sign that AI is reducing demand for graduates anywhere, citing instead a general malaise. If AI does impact graduate hiring, he's hopeful it won't be dramatic. "When accounting firms offshored jobs in 2010, everyone said it was the end of graduate programmes but they actually used offshoring to turbo charge growth," says Birchall, optimistically.