Target date fund assets have topped the $5 trillion mark according to the State of the Target-Date Market: Year-end 2025 report, out today from Sway Research. The report examines asset trends across providers, products, vehicles, management styles, and glide path structures.
Assets in U.S. mutual fund and collective investment trust (CIT) target date series expanded by 21% in 2025, reaching $4.8 trillion. Sway tracks an additional $371 billion in custom target date strategies, bringing the total TDF market tracked by the firm to $5.2 trillion at the close of 2025.
Last year, Sway’s report showed 15% overall target date asset growth for 2024 with assets totaling $3.97 trillion.
Twenty target date series were launched in 2025, taking the total amount of series with assets as of year-end 2025 to a record 164. Eleven of these new offerings are the product of co-manufacturing arrangements, all of which are exclusively distributed by specific defined contribution plan recordkeepers.
“Smaller target date managers that already had a difficult time competing for flows at leading DC platforms, given the scale advantages held by market leaders, are now finding it even more difficult to compete with target date solutions that are exclusive to large recordkeeping platforms and typically more cost-effective,” said Sway Founder and Principal Chris J. Brown.
Vanguard remains market leader
With $1.79 trillion of target date assets under management (AUM), Vanguard Group started 2026 with $1.1 trillion more invested in its target dates than its closest competitor Fidelity Investments ($693 billion). AUM at Vanguard grew by $310 billion in 2025, and the company finished 2025 managing 36.9% of the assets invested in target date mutual funds and CITs.
BlackRock was the third-largest manager of target date assets at the close of 2025, with $611 billion in its target date mutual funds, CITs, ETFs, and custom strategies. T. Rowe Price was No. 4 with $585 billion, including custom strategies, while Capital Group was No. 5 with $429 billion.
Together, these five firms managed 81.1% of assets in mutual fund and CIT target date series at the end of 2025, up from 80.8% three years prior. Great Gray Trust Co., which purchased the sub-advisory business of flexPATH Strategies in 2025, was the fastest-growing provider of size (>$1 billion of Target Date AUM) in 2025 (gaining 74% YOY) and over the last 3 years (averaging 52% annually), while finishing 2025 with $88 billion of target date AUM.
Pressure on smaller providers
Today’s report also revealed that co-manufacturing is adding pressure on smaller target date providers to compete.
At the end of 2025, there were 46 co-manufactured TD series with $72 billion of AUM. Great Gray leads all providers with $40 billion of co-manufactured target date AUM across 18 series.
In 2025 alone, 11 co-manufactured series were introduced, with Great Gray serving as trustee on seven of them. Ameritas (3), Empower (1), John Hancock (3), Principal (2), Standard (1), and Voya (1) each introduced co-manufactured target date series in 2025.
Co-manufactured target dates enable plan recordkeepers to manage the stable-value, GIC, or fixed annuity allocation within these series, thereby generating some economics to offset administrative costs and, in turn, lower the fees paid by plan participants. Series from two of the largest target date managers, BlackRock and Capital Group, were used in the most co- manufactured TD series—14 for Capital Group and 13 for BlackRock at the close of 2025.
Assets in TDFs with embedded income rose 39% in 2025
At the close of 2025, Sway tracked 17 target date solutions (up from 14 year-over-year) with $139 billion in AUM that are designed to provide guaranteed income in retirement, usually in the form of a deferred fixed or group annuity.
Assets in these products totaled just $100 billion at the outset of 2025. RetirePlus from TIAA, along with its investment management division, Nuveen, is the largest of these products with $72 billion of AUM as of year-end 2025, followed by BlackRock’s LifePath Paycheck ($27 billion), State Street IncomeWise ($22 billion), and the AB Lifetime Income Strategy with $14 billion.
“Within the next decade, it will seem as strange for a retirement plan to lack guaranteed income options as it would today for a plan to operate without target-date funds,” said Colbert Narcisse, chief product officer at TIAA, in a statement today. “Target-date funds revolutionized how Americans save for retirement. Target-dates that include annuities will revolutionize how they live in retirement.”
The Sway report found the 62% rise in assets posted in 2025 by BlackRock LifePath Paycheck was the largest YOY gain among income TD series of size (> $1 billion of AUM). Sway also noted anticipation is building for Vanguard’s entry into the income target date space with the planned 2026 launch of the Vanguard Target Retirement Lifetime Income Trusts, featuring TIAA’s Secure Income Account.
Sway’s biannual in-depth study of the target-date market—which is available for purchase—is based on a proprietary database of mutual fund and collective investment trust target-date portfolios and asset data featuring 164 target-date solutions with assets as of December 31, 2025, spread across nearly 7,000 mutual fund share classes and CITs.
Click here for more information about the report.
SEE ALSO:
• Vanguard, TIAA Team Up to Launch Target-Date CIT with Built-In Annuity
• Guaranteed Income Features in Target Dates Exceed $100B
• Target Date Trends: 15% Growth in 2024; Fees Continue to Fall