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Dallas has captured the No. 1 position in Cushman & Wakefield’s 2026 Global Data Center Market Comparison, signaling Texas’s rapid emergence as a dominant force in one of the world’s fastest-expanding industries. The commercial real estate firm’s analysis evaluated 107 markets worldwide, examining factors such as power accessibility, available land, construction pipelines, existing systems and regulatory frameworks. Austin-San Antonio and West Texas also claimed first-place rankings within their respective categories, demonstrating the state’s broad competitive advantage across multiple regions.
The rankings reflect where data center growth is positioned to accelerate rather than current operational scale, with Dallas holding an enormous pipeline of planned projects that trails only Virginia and Atlanta nationally. Companies are pursuing data centers to secure the substantial land and electrical capacity required for artificial intelligence infrastructure and large-scale computing operations. Cushman & Wakefield projects that Texas could eventually rival or overtake Virginia, which currently maintains the world’s largest data center market measured by operational capacity.
Texas possesses multiple strategic advantages fueling this expansion, including plentiful land, favorable business policies, an independent deregulated power grid and state development incentives. Activity has expanded beyond the established Dallas-Fort Worth corridor as developers seek vast tracts and electricity supplies elsewhere across the state. However, this explosive growth has prompted political scrutiny, with Gov. Greg Abbott pressuring data center operators to fund their own power generation and bear infrastructure expenses.
Resource constraints pose significant challenges to sustaining Texas’s momentum. Water scarcity threatens West Texas and the Panhandle, while unprecedented electricity demands are straining grid capacity and reliability. Industry-wide, utility companies require an average of 4.4 years to connect large projects to existing grids, pushing some developers to independently source or generate power. Texas’s ability to maintain its top ranking ultimately hinges on solving the power supply equation as development accelerates.
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