Christie & Co's Dental Market Review 2026, published by the specialist business property adviser, delivers a headline message of renewed confidence: corporates, private equity investors and larger group operators are back on the acquisition trail, competition for the best practices is intensifying, and, in the firm's phrase, a "flight to quality" is under way among buyers. That is worth knowing if you own a practice and are thinking about your options. It is also worth reading carefully, because the report is produced by a firm that earns fees on transaction volume.
What the transactional data shows
According to Christie & Co, 57 per cent of accepted offers in the first six months of 2026 completed at or above asking price. The composition of buyers has shifted too: independents accounted for 77 per cent of offers received throughout 2025, but corporate and larger group operators have returned in 2026 and so far account for 50 per cent of offers, the report states.
These are the report's most concrete figures, drawn from Christie & Co's own transactional book, valuation activity and consultancy projects. They are probably directionally real. It is also worth stating plainly what they do not tell you: the report as reported by The Probe gives no EBITDA multiples, no goodwill-as-percentage-of-turnover benchmarks and no typical deal sizes, so "premium values" cannot be quantified from this source. Nor is anything said about the 43 per cent of deals completing below asking, or about practices that do not sell at all — the marginal and average end of the market is simply absent from the narrative. A headline statistic is not a substitute for an independent valuation of your own business.
Where the report shifts from data to sentiment
A large part of the review rests not on transactions but on a survey of more than 27,000 dental professionals. The methodology — response rate, sampling frame — is not disclosed in the source, and the sample is self-selected, so these figures are best read as directional sector sentiment rather than robust evidence.
On that basis, Christie & Co reports that 39 per cent of respondents feel positive about the sector, against 30 per cent negative and 31 per cent neutral; that 61 per cent intend to invest in new technology and equipment over the next 12 to 24 months; and that 32 per cent plan to recruit additional staff. On demand, 65 per cent said they had seen increased demand for NHS dentistry over the past year, and 45 per cent reported growing demand for high-value elective treatments. The overall UK dental market is forecast to reach roughly £15 billion by 2027/28, the report says — a projection that is Christie & Co's own analysis and is not independently verified in the source.
One point of caution for anyone tempted to recycle these numbers: the 45 per cent "demand for elective treatment" figure is professional perception of commercial demand, not a clinical needs assessment. It should never surface in patient-facing marketing as evidence that patients "need" or should "join the trend" toward cosmetic or elective work — doing so risks breaching CAP Code rules on misleading and unsubstantiated claims.
The 'not financial engineering' claim
Paul Graham, Managing Director – Medical at Christie & Co, is quoted saying the increased demand "is not being driven by speculation or financial engineering" but by strong fundamentals, growing patient demand and improving profitability. That is a reassuring line — and it is the report's own MD offering it, unsupported in the source by any comparison to previous cycles or to how private-equity-backed roll-ups have behaved after acquisition. UK dentistry, like veterinary and optical care, has seen PE-backed consolidation overextend and retrench before. A report cannot simultaneously be neutral market data and a rebuttal of financial-engineering concerns issued in the same press release. Read the assertion as the adviser's position, not as an established finding.
NHS and mixed practices: read the thesis literally
One genuinely new development, per the report, is corporate and group appetite for NHS and NHS-led mixed practices following recent contract reforms. The stated logic is that buyers want "stable contracted income alongside opportunities to expand private services over time."
That is worth reading at face value. The commercial thesis is to use guaranteed NHS income as a floor while migrating patients toward private income streams. It is a legitimate business strategy, but it sits awkwardly beside the report's parallel claim that NHS and private dentistry "cannot coexist without the other," and it has direct implications for NHS access that the review treats as a minor caveat. This is a stated acquisition thesis, not a neutral observation about the health of the system.
Workforce: throughput, not proven capability
The report frames workforce supply optimistically. For the first time, internationally qualified dentists made up the majority of new registrations in 2025, at 53 per cent, with changes to the Overseas Registration Examination, reforms to the Licence in Dental Surgery pathway and expanded training capacity expected to increase numbers further. More than four in five respondents (82 per cent) believe recent training and examination changes will help increase future delivery of NHS and/or private dentistry.
Both figures describe supply and sentiment, not competency or safety. Nothing in the source addresses ORE pass rates, post-registration supervision, mentoring provision or fitness-to-practise trends. The optimism here is about throughput of registrants — a capacity signal, not a standard-of-care measure — and should be labelled as such.
On the ground, a widening buyer pool and 32 per cent of professionals planning to recruit points to more competition for the same limited pool of dentists, hygienists and nurses locally. If well-funded corporates are expanding in your area, expect upward pressure on recruitment costs and time-to-hire.
The CMA question
The review notes the Competition and Markets Authority's review of private dentistry: 39 per cent of respondents said they were concerned, while 56 per cent described themselves as neutral or unsure. Christie & Co says it believes greater pricing transparency and consumer-communication requirements are more likely outcomes than structural intervention.
That prediction deserves scrutiny. Structural remedies — restrictions on ownership concentration, for example — would directly threaten the M&A market from which Christie & Co earns its fees, so the "pricing transparency" forecast is a convenient one. It is presented as sector opinion but is the firm's own prediction. And a 56 per cent neutral-or-unsure share is not evidence that concern is misplaced; it is evidence that most respondents have not yet formed a view.
If you are within two to three years of exit and run a genuinely strong business — clean financials, stable team, documented compliance, demonstrable patient retention — the conditions the report describes are worth taking seriously. Getting sale-ready is months of housekeeping, not a weekend job: tidied associate contracts, complete compliance files, consistent NHS/UDA delivery and clean accounts all come under tougher due diligence from corporate buyers. Commission an independent valuation now rather than working from a headline statistic.
There is a useful alignment worth naming: the report flags patient experience and stable clinical teams as goodwill drivers, which means structured recall, review generation and retention systems are, for once, both clinically sound and commercially valuable ahead of a sale. That said, model the payback yourself — the report offers no data on whether capex chasing these markers is recovered in a higher multiple within your holding period, and 61 per cent of the profession planning to invest in technology is sentiment, not evidence of return.
For independents staying put, ownership structure can be a modest positioning point — "same clinical team, independently owned" is an honest, factual message — but it should not be oversold. Most patients choose on convenience, price and word of mouth, not corporate structure, and any "independently owned" line must stay non-disparaging: implying corporate ownership means worse care would be an unsubstantiated comparative claim under CAP/ASA rules and GDC advertising guidance. Equally, group marketing teams cannot badge acquisitions as a "network of quality-assured practices": CQC ratings and clinical governance credentials are practice-specific, and a parent company's scale is not a substitute for an evidenced clinical-quality claim.
Finally, note who is not in the picture. "Commercial quality" — goodwill, retention, EBITDA — is not the same as clinical quality, which the report does not measure. The premium a buyer pays for a stable clinical team creates pressure to extract returns afterwards; retention as a valuation driver before a sale is not the same as retention being protected after one. Principals negotiating a sale, and clinical leads joining larger groups, should be alert to how clinical governance, CQC responsibility and clinical autonomy are assigned in the contract — none of which this report addresses, and precisely where commercial and clinical interests can diverge.
The seller's-market headline is probably justified for the best assets. Just remember whose interest is served by talking valuations up, and that a hot market for the top tier says nothing reassuring about everyone else.