The recent CEO turnover trend continues with three high-profile exits

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.

With apologies to T.S. Eliot, some CEOs are finding that February, not April, may be the cruelest month. In recent weeks, Workday, PayPal, and The Washington Post parted ways with their chief executives, suggesting that high CEO turnover, which reached record levels in recent years, may continue in 2026.

CEO turnover remains high

Russell Reynolds Associates, the global leadership advisory firm, found that 234 CEOs of globally listed companies departed their roles last year, up 16% from 2024 and 21% above the eight-year average. Last year marked the second consecutive record-breaking year for CEO exits, according to the firm’s Global CEO Turnover Index Report.

The Russell Reynolds report attributes the high turnover in part to pressure from activist investors who want faster results. (Its research shows that 32 CEOs resigned within one year of an activist campaign in 2025, compared to 27 in 2024.) The data also suggests that boards are willing to pull the trigger earlier when performance stalls.

“It’s too early to predict whether 2026 will set another record for CEO turnover, but the underlying macro pressures—including activist influence, market volatility, and ongoing transformation—remain in place,” says Laura Mantoura, managing director in Russell Reynolds’s U.S. Board & CEO Advisory practice. “As a result, sustained high levels of CEO turnover should be expected.”

However, not everyone is convinced this is the new normal. Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer at global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, sees turnover leveling off after three years of brisk executive change, which followed a reluctance to change leaders during the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 and 2021.

“I think our initial expectation right now is that the demand for change at the top is cooling a bit despite some big recent examples,” he says.

Challenger notes that there’s one scenario that could trigger another record wave of CEO exits: a recession.

Experience wins

Investor demands appear to be pushing boards to favor experienced CEOs at public companies. Of the CEOs who took the reins at S&P 500 companies in 2025, 79% were first-time CEOs, down from 83% in 2024, and lower than the eight-year average of 85%, according to Russell Reynolds.

That trend is playing out in 2026 succession scenarios: Alex Chriss, who had been an executive vice president at Intuit before becoming CEO of PayPal, is being replaced by Enrique Lores, who spent six years as president and CEO of HP. Workday cofounder Aneel Bhusri, who has served as the software company’s CEO or co-CEO at various points during the last 15 years, takes over from Carl Eschenbach, who had been a partner at Sequoia Capital and president and chief operating officer at VMware before joining Workday.

Whether the recent spike in CEO turnover represents a temporary surge or permanent shift, executive recruiters and advisers say boards need to prioritize succession planning, and they need to think about the company’s needs in the coming years.

As leadership expert Bill George has said: “Figure out what [the company] is going to need for the next 10 years, and find people with the mental agility and courage to look at it differently than you looked at it.”

Your leadership outlook

Do you see CEO turnover continuing at a rapid pace? Or are you, like Challenger, expecting it to level off? Let me know your thoughts. My email address is stephaniemehta@mansueto.com.

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