Calgary Industrial — Q1 2026

The Quarter in Brief

Calgary's industrial market opened 2026 much as it closed 2025: tight, active, and barely moved on the quarter. Across the six brokerages, headline vacancy readings ranged from 3.0% to 5.2%, and most reported quarter-over-quarter changes of well under half a percentage point in either direction. What shifted more visibly was the supply side. After several years of a shrinking development pipeline, speculative construction returned in Q1 2026, and every broker recorded the volume of space under construction rising — for CBRE, to its highest level since Q4 2023.

Demand was uneven by size. Brokers consistently described tight conditions in small- and mid-bay space — CBRE reported that the number of options under 5,000 square feet (sf) had fallen 33.0% year-over-year, and JLL put vacancy for buildings under 50,000 sf at 1.6% against 6.8% for the largest properties (250,000 to 500,000 sf). Net absorption split on its sign: Colliers reported positive absorption of roughly 746K sf and JLL 231,082 sf, while Cushman & Wakefield recorded negative 231k sf and Avison Young negative 350K sf. Both brokers who reported negative absorption attributed it to a single large-format property — in Cushman & Wakefield's case, roughly 499k sf of vacancy arriving in one Southeast building — rather than any broad weakening.

Rents held roughly flat near the bottom of the national range. Brokers placed the average net asking rate between $10.49 and $11.64 psf, with most reporting little change on the quarter. JLL described Calgary as carrying both the lowest vacancy rate and the most competitive direct asking net rents among all major Canadian industrial markets — a relative, cross-market comparison rather than a statement about Calgary's own history, where vacancy remains above its 2022 to 2023 lows.