A Record Year for ICSID: What the FY2026 Numbers Reveal

Who's really paying for a lawsuit against a government — and is it about oil, or gold? ICSID's newest caseload numbers give an unusually clear answer to both questions.

Background

The World Bank's ICSID Centre administers most of the world's investor-state arbitrations, cases where a foreign investor sues a government directly for compensation. Once every six months it publishes a full breakdown of its caseload, and the edition covering the fiscal year that ended in June 2026 describes its busiest year yet: 363 cases administered in total, the highest number in the Centre's history.

Where the cases come from

Sixty new cases were registered in FY2026, and most of them still get there the way disputes have for decades: 62% invoked a bilateral investment treaty, the kind of agreement that lets a foreign investor bypass domestic courts and sue a government directly before an international tribunal. Another 24% relied on other international treaties, 8% on a contract with the state itself, and just 6% needed nothing more than a domestic investment law.

Who's really behind the claim

For the first time, ICSID cases now come with a mandatory paper trail on financing. Under a 2022 rule, any claimant whose case is being paid for by someone else — a hedge fund, a specialist litigation funder, in exchange for a cut of any eventual award — has to disclose it. In FY2026, 12% of new cases carried exactly that disclosure. It's a modest share, but it marks a shift away from what for decades was undisclosed, effectively invisible financing behind claims worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Which industries end up in front of a tribunal

Oil and gas accounted for a quarter of all new cases in FY2026, the largest single sector, with mining not far behind at 18%. Together, the two extractive industries made up more than four in ten of the disputes filed against governments this year, well ahead of finance and electric power (10% each) or construction (7%). And winning is far from guaranteed: of the arbitrations tribunals actually decided, 40% rejected every claim on the merits, and 70% of decided cases ended with no damages awarded to the investor at all.

If oil, gas and mining together account for nearly half of all new claims against governments — and outside funders are quietly behind a growing share of them — who is investor-state arbitration really working for?