For the FTSE 100, like anything else, a new year brings new opportunities. This was true in January 2025 when some unheralded stocks turned out to have monster years – a few going up multiple times in value.
What will be the Footsie big winners this year? Which big names on the London Stock Exchange might double in value in 2026? I roped my old buddy ChatGPT in to help me get the cogs whirring.
I asked: “Which FTSE 100 stocks will surge in 2026? (Ideally, stocks with a chance to double in value or more.)”
Here was the reponse, separated by tiers:
“? Tier 3 — Upside Weighted with Safety / Valuation Appeal” – AstraZeneca, GSK, Barclays
“? Tier 2 — Strong Upside but More Established” – HSBC, Rio Tinto, BP, Shell
“? Tier 1 — Highest Upside Potential (Speculative / Cyclical)” – Glencore, BAE Systems, Rolls–Royce
One of the most striking details of the stocks selected is how large they all are. There are 10 stocks in ChatGPT’s list and they are close to being exactly the same as the largest FTSE 100 stocks by market cap. The top three of AstraZeneca (£211bn market cap), HSBC (£205bn), and Shell (£158bn) are all in there.
Why is this a problem? Because large blue-chip companies tend to be mature. This means they’ve been around a while and offer steady but stable growth rather than being the stocks that surge past all others in any given year.
That’s not to say AstraZeneca couldn’t surge in 2026. A new blockbuster drug or two might pop along to send the share into orbit. But it’s a lot harder to double up when we’re already dealing with numbers in the hundreds of billions.
A banner year?
With all that said, the number one spot on the list is occupied by Rolls-Royce (LSE: RR.) and I won’t be disagreeing with that. The share price has been rocketing in recent years after success in its sales of engines for consumer and military aircraft along with increasing demand for other types of power systems too.
As with any stock that has been surging, it pays to look at the valuation. How much am I paying for a Rolls-Royce share compared to earnings? As Warren Buffett is fond of saying: “Price is what you pay but value is what you get.”
The Rolls-Royce forward price-to-earnings ratio stands at 36. That’s pretty high compared to the FTSE 100 average of 19. While an elevated P/E ratio does suggest investors like the look of a stock’s long term prospects, it means a lot of future growth is already baked into the price you are paying.
For Rolls-Royce to surge next year looks unlikely now – a double would take it to biggest Footsie firm by market cap – but there were a lot of naysayers at the start of 2025 too and look how that turned out. I’d call the stock worth considering.
