Fortune's Europe team gathered at the London Stock Exchange on Sept. 16 for a special launch ceremony marking the release of the latest Fortune 500 Europe list. The ceremonial ringing of the bell that opened the day's trading also signaled the publication of the ranking, which each year sizes up Europe's biggest businesses.

The figures underscored the scale of the companies that made the cut. Combined revenues of this year's Fortune 500 Europe hit a record high of $15.5 trillion, while profits reached $1 trillion.

London proved a fitting venue for the milestone. For the first time in the four-year history of the Fortune 500 Europe, the U.K. overtook Germany as home to the most ranked companies — breaking Germany's hold on the top spot since the list began.

The 2026 list also laid bare a continued lack of female representation at the top of European business. Only 8.6% of the continent's 500 biggest companies — just 43 in total — are run by women, compared with roughly 11% of CEOs on the Fortune 500 in the United States.

Karin Rådström, chief executive of Daimler Truck (No. 72 on the Fortune 500 Europe), is among that small group. In a conversation with Fortune, Rådström said the persistent underrepresentation of women at the top of European business only strengthens her resolve to succeed. A former elite rower, she knows what it takes to compete at the highest level. As CEO of the world's largest truckmaker, Rådström is steering the company in a new direction, expanding its defense business and preparing for intensifying competition from China. The full interview is available here.

Vestas, another European industrial heavyweight, is confronting the same pressure from Chinese rivals. The Danish wind turbine manufacturer (No. 212 on the list) has weathered a turbulent stretch in recent years but is back in the black under the leadership of CEO Henrik Andersen. Fortune features writer Sam Birchall sat down with Andersen to discuss his early fascination with wind turbines and his unusual decision to hold a faux funeral for the company's old motto. That conversation can be read here.

September also saw anxieties around artificial intelligence reach a fever pitch after an Anthropic safety researcher warned there was a 10% chance the technology “could kill all humans” within the next 10 years.

Against a backdrop of growing public concern and calls for a slowdown in frontier AI development, Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell traveled to San Francisco to speak with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Their conversation addressed whether AI can ever truly be controlled, the threat it poses to humanity, how to avoid a worst-case scenario, and the ChatGPT-maker's much-anticipated IPO. The discussion can be read here, or watched in full at fortune.com/titans.

While the world grapples with questions about AI's future, other business leaders are focused on tackling today's challenges. The Fortune Change the World list spotlights companies that address societal and environmental issues as part of their core business functions.

For Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, founder of metals group Fortescue, that means taking on two enormous challenges: cleaning up one of the world's most carbon-intensive industries and helping rebuild war-ravaged Ukraine. Both are high-stakes and costly gambits, but as Vivienne Walt reports, Forrest is determined to prove that business can be a force for positive change. Her full report is available here.

It is a philosophy Fortune shares.

This article appears in the October/November 2026: Europe issue of Fortune.