Total office leasing activity across India held at 66.7 million square feet through the first three quarters of 2026, with growing uptake from Global Capability Centres, flexible workspace providers, and domestically oriented businesses absorbing the slack left by a pullback among third-party IT services firms, according to research published by Knight Frank India.

Office leasing volumes across eight of India's key commercial hubs held flat against the figures recorded in the same stretch a year earlier, the findings showed. The report noted that although total leasing activity held steady, the mix of demand had been shifting.

Within the overall pool of office transactions, global capability centres claimed a larger portion of activity while leasing by third-party IT and IT-enabled services firms contracted by 36 per cent against the prior year. Demand from third-party IT service providers contracted by 36 per cent on a year-over-year basis across the first nine months of CY2026, though momentum from Global Capability Centres, flexible workspace operators, and occupiers focused on the domestic market absorbed much of that shortfall — with GCCs alone capturing a 41 per cent share of total office take-up in the January-to-September window, a figure that stood at 37 per cent in the same stretch of 2025 and at 31 per cent two years prior.

Through the first nine months of 2025, office space taken up by GCCs reached 27.4 million square feet, a figure that climbed roughly 10.4 per cent against the 24.8 million square feet recorded in the same period a year earlier. Outside-vendor IT and ITeS firms took up roughly 9 million square feet of space over that stretch, a notable retreat from the 14.1 million square feet absorbed by the same segment twelve months prior, with that group's portion coming to 13 per cent of total activity across all office transactions recorded.

Reduced leasing uptake across Bengaluru, Chennai, and the National Capital Region pulled the overall figure lower, whereas Hyderabad posted the top volume in that category — 2.9 million square feet — among all the markets tracked. Expansion by GCCs, flexible workspace operators, and India-focused businesses absorbed much of the slack left by a pullback in third-party IT services leasing, leaving aggregate office demand on an even footing.

Shishir Baijal, International Partner, Chairman, and Managing Director at Knight Frank India, pointed to a shift in the character of demand under way in the market, with global capability centres broadening their footprint, flexible workspace operators picking up pace, and India-focused businesses adding to overall leasing volumes — a pattern he described as evidence of the country's deepening involvement in both worldwide capability development and domestic commercial growth.

Across all eight markets covered by the report, office rental rates posted year-on-year gains during the July-to-September period, with growth spanning a range of three to thirteen per cent. Among the markets tracked, Kolkata posted the steepest year-on-year gain at 13 per cent, with NCR coming in at 12 per cent and Hyderabad registering a 9 per cent uptick over the same period. Quarter-on-quarter, rents in Mumbai climbed by 4 per cent, a pace that outpaced every other city tracked in the period.

Heading into the final quarter of 2026, the office sector drew on a widening pool of tenant interest and steady deal-making, with GCCs, flexible workspace providers, and India-focused enterprises each contributing to overall take-up, according to the report.