Europe 2026: which heat-pump brands are still stuck on R32?

The 2026 refrigerant split: R290 dominates, but not evenly

Europe’s listed heat-pump market has already crossed the strategic line: EPREL shows 537 declared R290 entries versus 13,935 declared R32 entries in the supplied refrigerant usage table, but that table is plainly incomplete against a market total of 60,989 models, so it cannot support a market-wide percentage split for all listings in 2026 (refrigerant_universe) (brand_share).

That gap matters. The topic here is brand exposure, but the corpus does not include a brand-by-refrigerant cross-tab, nor a complete refrigerant count covering all 60,989 EPREL-listed models (brand_share) (refrigerant_universe). So the strongest defensible takeaway is narrower: refrigerant strategy is now a live dividing line in Europe, yet the corpus provided here is not sufficient to rank manufacturers by their exact 2026 R32 share or R290 share.

What the corpus does show is that the market is large, concentrated, and already segmented by portfolio scale. The top 20 manufacturers account for a substantial portion of EPREL listings, led by Daikin Europe N.V. with 14,668 models, or 24.05% of all listed models, followed by Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. with 5,575 models and 9.14%, and JOHNSON CONTROLS HITACHI AIR CONDITIONING EUROPE SAS, SUCURSAL EN ESPAÑA with 5,207 models and 8.54% (brand_share).

For readers tracking the shift toward low-GWP refrigerants, the useful context is the refrigerants reference: R290 is listed with GWP 0, while R32 is listed at GWP 771 and carries an EU phase-out date of 2027-01-01 in the supplied reference table (refrigerant_universe).

Which brands are still most exposed to R32

The sharpest answer the article set out to give — which brands are most exposed to R32, and by what share — cannot be answered from this corpus because the required manufacturer-level refrigerant mix is missing.

The failed brand_detail probes underline the problem. The supplied attempts for Daikin, Midea, Mitsubishi Electric and Bosch all returned “manufacturer slug not found” or unavailable data, so there is no usable brand-level refrigerant breakdown in the research block (brand_detail). Without that, any ranking of “top laggards” by R32 share would be guesswork, and that would violate the evidence standard.

What can be said is that the likely commercial stakes are biggest for the largest portfolios. Daikin’s 14,668 listed models, Mitsubishi Electric’s 5,575, Hitachi’s 5,207, and Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH’s 3,602 mean that any slow or fast refrigerant transition inside those catalogues would move far more volume than a niche maker’s shift would (brand_share). If one of those large brands remains heavily tied to `R32` listings, that is strategically more consequential than the same mix at a 400-model manufacturer.

That is also why buyers and journalists should be cautious about anecdotal impressions. A brand may market a flagship `R290` catalogue while still carrying a long tail of legacy R32 registrations in EPREL. The corpus here simply does not quantify that tail by maker.

The R290-heavy leaders and what their portfolios look like

The same limitation applies at the other end of the table: the corpus does not support a ranked list of brands with the highest R290 share in 2026.

Still, the portfolio context is useful. Among the top 20 listed manufacturers, average SCOP ranges from 3.93 for Toshiba Carrier Europe S.A.S to 4.93 for LG Electronics Deutschland GmbH, with STIEBEL ELTRON at 4.84, Bosch at 4.69, Gorenje at 4.67, Gree at 4.65 and Ferroli at 4.64 (brand_share). That does not prove those brands are R290-heavy; it only shows that some smaller and mid-sized portfolios are already posting strong average efficiency in EPREL.

That distinction matters because the article’s final question asks how many R290 versus R32 models appear among top-selling or highest-SCOP brand portfolios. The corpus includes average SCOP by brand, but not refrigerant mix inside those portfolios, and not a “top-selling” dataset at all (brand_share). So no evidence-based count is possible here.

Readers wanting to inspect catalogues directly can at least compare manufacturer pages and filtered listings, including Ariston SpA, ATLANTIC SOC FRANCAISE DEVELOP THERMIQUE, Vaillant GmbH, and BDR Thermea Group B.V., alongside the full heat-pump catalog. But that is catalogue navigation, not a quantified ranking from this dataset.

Model count versus refrigerant strategy: scale, mix, and positioning

What the corpus does answer cleanly is the scale question. Europe’s EPREL heat-pump universe in this snapshot totals 60,989 models, and the ranking is highly top-heavy (brand_share).

The top five brands alone account for 31,670 models: Daikin 14,668, Mitsubishi Electric 5,575, Hitachi 5,207, Bosch 3,602 and Ariston 2,618 (brand_share). That is 51.93% of all listed models by simple addition of their published shares — 24.05%, 9.14%, 8.54%, 5.91% and 4.29% (brand_share).

Below them sits a long middle tier: Atlantic with 1,516 models, Vaillant 1,195, BDR Thermea 925, General HVAC Solutions Euro 921, and Panasonic 894 (brand_share). Then comes a dense tail of sub-700-model brands including Ferroli, Gree, Toshiba, Riello, Gorenje, STIEBEL ELTRON, Viessmann, LG, MHIAE Services and TESY (brand_share).

That scale structure shapes refrigerant strategy even if this corpus cannot quantify the mix directly. Large incumbents often carry broad installed-base support, multiple product families and slower registration turnover; smaller or more specialized players can pivot faster. But that is an analytical interpretation, not a measured EPREL-by-brand refrigerant split from the supplied data.

Why refrigerant mix still matters commercially in 2026

The commercial logic is clearer than the missing cross-tab. R32 is listed here with GWP 771 and a phase-out date of 2027-01-01, while R290 is listed with GWP 0 and no phase-out date in the supplied table (refrigerant_universe). That alone explains why refrigerant mix has become a portfolio-level signal rather than a footnote.

For buyers, installers and policy watchers, a brand’s share of `R290` models versus `R32` models points to product-roadmap timing, installer training needs, and the likely longevity of a platform. For manufacturers, it affects positioning in market leaderboards, the broader market index, and increasingly the policy conversation around compliance and transition risk.

But the most important factual point is also the simplest: this corpus does not contain enough data to say how many brands have zero R32 exposure, how many have majority-R32 portfolios, which brands are the worst laggards, or which are the clear R290 leaders. It does contain enough to show why those answers matter, and which manufacturers are large enough that their eventual transition path will shape the European market disproportionately (brand_share) (refrigerant_universe).

Sources

brand_share — EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation. Snapshot: 2026-05-24.
brand_detail — (probe failed — data unavailable). Snapshot: .
refrigerant_universe — IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes. Snapshot: 2026-05-24.