I have been watching faith-based investing for a long time, and I have written enough "this is the year" predictions to be skeptical of anyone who uses that phrase, including myself. So I want to make the case carefully, with actual evidence, that 2026 is in fact the year faith-based investing transitions from a specialty category into a mainstream part of the retail investment landscape. The claim is big, but I think the evidence is strong.

Let me lay out what I see, why I think it matters, and what the implications are for investors, advisors, and the industry.

What mainstream actually means

Before making the case, let me be clear about what "mainstream" means in this context. A category is mainstream when retail investors can access its products through any major brokerage account, when the fees are competitive with comparable conventional products, when financial advisors routinely recommend it to appropriate clients, when major asset managers treat it as a core part of their business, and when the category has enough scale and diversity that investors can build complete portfolios within it.

By those criteria, faith-based investing has been niche for a long time. Halal investing was accessible only through specialized platforms or expensive mutual funds. Catholic investing was dominated by a handful of small fund families. Christian BRI was marketed primarily through Christian financial advisors and rarely encountered in mainstream financial planning. ESG was mainstream but was not really the same thing as faith-based investing despite sharing some surface similarities.

The claim I want to defend is that in 2026, all of those conditions have changed in ways that collectively amount to a transition from niche to mainstream.

The evidence: product accessibility

The first piece of evidence is product accessibility. If you want to buy a halal ETF today, you can do it through Fidelity, Charles Schwab, Vanguard, E-Trade, Robinhood, and basically every other major US brokerage. The iShares MSCI World Islamic ETF is available everywhere. The SP Funds Dow Jones Global Sukuk ETF is available everywhere. Several other Shariah-compliant ETFs are similarly accessible. Five years ago, most of these products either did not exist or were hard to find outside specialized platforms.

The same is true for Catholic-focused products. Ave Maria funds, Knights of Columbus funds, Praxis funds, and several others are accessible through all major brokerages. Christian BRI products from Eventide, Inspire, and Timothy Plan are similarly accessible. The distribution infrastructure that used to require going to a specialized advisor or a Christian finance ministry now runs through the same pipes as every other fund product.

The accessibility point might seem minor but it is actually huge. When a product is hard to find, only the most motivated buyers will go looking for it. When a product is easy to find, it becomes available to casual buyers and to advisor recommendations. The shift from hard-to-find to easy-to-find dramatically expands the potential customer base.

The evidence: cost competitiveness

The second piece of evidence is that faith-based products are now cost-competitive with conventional alternatives in most categories. BlackRock's Shariah ETF has an expense ratio of 0.39 percent. The biggest halal sukuk ETF is at 0.49 percent. Several Catholic funds have fees in the 0.60 to 0.80 percent range, which is higher than the cheapest index funds but in line with active management. Christian BRI products from Eventide have fees that are broadly competitive with active mutual fund alternatives.

The cost gap between faith-based and conventional products still exists but has narrowed significantly over the last three to five years. For a typical halal ETF, the cost premium over a conventional index fund is maybe 30 to 40 basis points, which is a meaningful difference but not prohibitive. For most investors, this cost premium is an acceptable price for faith alignment.

Cost competitiveness is important because it removes one of the main reasons investors previously rejected faith-based products. The old objection was "these funds are too expensive to justify." That objection is much weaker in 2026 than it was in 2020. Faith-based products are still not the cheapest option, but they are cheap enough that the cost argument is no longer decisive.

The evidence: advisor adoption

The third piece of evidence is that financial advisors are increasingly incorporating faith-based products into their recommendations for appropriate clients. This is happening at every level of the advisory industry, from independent registered investment advisors to the major wirehouses.

Surveys of financial advisors from 2024 and 2025 showed meaningful growth in the percentage of advisors who report recommending faith-based products to at least some clients. In a 2025 survey by Cerulli Associates, about 28 percent of surveyed advisors reported recommending faith-based funds in the past year, up from 14 percent in 2020. The growth was especially strong among advisors working with younger client populations and with clients who had expressed interest in values-aligned investing.

The advisor adoption matters because advisors are an important distribution channel for retail investment products. When advisors start recommending a category, flows follow. The recent growth in advisor adoption is a leading indicator of continued retail flow growth into faith-based products over the next several years.

The evidence: major manager commitment

The fourth piece of evidence is that major asset managers are now treating faith-based investing as a core part of their business rather than an optional specialty. BlackRock's Shariah ETF launch in 2025 is the most visible example, but State Street, Franklin Templeton, Invesco, and several others have all made meaningful investments in faith-based product lines over the last two years.

The commitment from major managers matters because it signals that the category is large enough to warrant serious investment. Major managers do not launch products for small markets. Their decision to enter faith-based investing in a meaningful way is itself evidence that the addressable market has become large enough to justify the investment.

I still expect Vanguard to eventually join this group, probably within the next two to three years, which will complete the picture. When Vanguard decides that a category is worth entering, it is almost always because the category has already become mainstream.

The evidence: retail momentum

The fifth piece of evidence is that retail investors are actually putting money into these products at rates that dwarf anything from previous years. I covered several specific data points in other posts in this series. Halal retail AUM has grown from about $25 billion in 2020 to roughly $50 billion in early 2026. Catholic investing retail flows grew 30 to 50 percent in 2025. Christian BRI added $50 billion in AUM in 2025 alone.

Those growth rates are not possible in a niche category. They require real retail momentum driven by large numbers of individual investors making allocation decisions. The retail momentum is real, and it is sustained across multiple faith-based categories, which suggests it is a structural shift rather than a temporary fad.

The evidence: content and creator ecosystems

The sixth piece of evidence is that every faith-based investing category now has a meaningful content and creator ecosystem that did not exist three years ago. The halal investing content ecosystem reaches tens of millions of viewers across YouTube, TikTok, and podcasts. The Catholic investing content scene is growing rapidly following the 2024 USCCB update. The Christian BRI content community has become active on Christian radio, podcasts, and social media.

These content ecosystems matter because they create the awareness and education that retail investors need to make informed choices about faith-based products. When the only source of information about halal investing was industry white papers and conference presentations, the category was inherently inaccessible to most retail investors. When the information is available from YouTube creators explaining concepts in plain language, the category becomes accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

What is still not mainstream

I want to be honest about where faith-based investing is still not fully mainstream, because I think pretending the transition is complete would be wrong.

Faith-based fixed income is still not fully mainstream. Sukuk ETFs exist but are more expensive than conventional bond ETFs. Catholic bond funds are available but are still a narrow category. The transition of fixed income is lagging the transition of equities, and this will probably take another couple of years to complete.

Faith-based alternatives and private market products are still in their early stages. Private credit, private equity, and venture capital are all large asset classes in conventional investing, but the Shariah-compliant and values-screened versions of these are still small and mostly inaccessible to retail investors. This is probably where the next wave of growth will come from, but we are not there yet.

Retirement plan integration is still incomplete. Most 401(k) plans do not offer faith-based options as default investment choices, which means many Muslim, Catholic, and Christian BRI investors cannot easily allocate their retirement savings to values-aligned products. Fixing this requires changes at the plan sponsor level and will take time.

International accessibility varies significantly by country. Faith-based investing is well-developed in the US, UK, several Gulf countries, Malaysia, and Indonesia. It is less developed in continental Europe, Latin America, and much of Africa. Global accessibility is still a work in progress.

What mainstream status implies for the next five years

If 2026 is the year faith-based investing goes mainstream, the next five years are going to look quite different from the previous five. Here are my predictions for what to expect.

The total AUM in faith-based products is going to grow from roughly $350 billion globally today to somewhere between $700 billion and $1 trillion by 2031. That is a doubling or tripling of the category over five years, which is achievable given the growth rates we are already seeing.

The category will become less dominated by specialty managers and more integrated into the product lineups of large asset managers. Specialty managers will continue to exist but will face competitive pressure on fees and distribution. Some will consolidate, some will get acquired, and some will find specific niches where they can continue to compete effectively.

Faith-based products will become a normal feature of financial advisor conversations with clients rather than a specialized topic that only comes up when clients raise it. Advisors will increasingly ask clients about values alignment as part of standard discovery processes, and will have ready recommendations for clients who want faith-based options.

The content and creator ecosystems will continue to grow and professionalize. Some of the current creators will become full-time industry figures. New entrants will emerge. The information asymmetry that used to disadvantage retail faith-based investors will continue to shrink.

New product categories will emerge. I expect faith-based private credit, faith-based direct indexing, faith-based model portfolios, and several other adjacent categories to develop as the infrastructure matures.

Regulatory attention will increase as the category gets larger. This will be a mix of helpful clarifications and bureaucratic complications. The industry will need to invest more in compliance and government relations than it has historically.

Why this matters

The mainstreaming of faith-based investing is not just a product story or a business story. It is a story about whether investors can build portfolios that are consistent with their values without making meaningful sacrifices on cost, diversification, or product quality. For decades, the answer was no or not really. In 2026, for the first time, the answer is mostly yes.

That is a significant change for individual investors. It means that observant Muslims, Catholics, and evangelical Christians no longer have to choose between financial alignment with their faith and financial alignment with their practical investment needs. They can have both. The portfolios they build will not be identical to what they would build without faith-based constraints, but the differences are smaller and less costly than they used to be, and the products are genuinely accessible.

It is also a significant change for the broader investment industry. It means that faith-based investing is no longer something that can be ignored by mainstream financial services providers. The demand is real, the products exist, and the distribution infrastructure is in place. Firms that do not engage with the category are losing clients and assets to firms that do.

2026 is the year the transition becomes undeniable. Whether you are an investor, an advisor, a fund manager, or just someone watching the industry, the shift has happened. The question now is what comes next, and who is going to win the next phase of growth. Those are the stories I will be writing about for the rest of this year and beyond. But the mainstreaming story itself is essentially complete. Faith-based investing has arrived.

Why 2026 Is the Year Faith-Based Investing Goes Mainstream