Important Upcoming Changes to Morningstar Categories and Category Groupings in Morningstar Data Products - Apr. 30 and Oct. 31, 2025

Originally posted Jan. 6, 2025

Updated Feb. 6, 2025

Updated Mar. 13, 2025

Updated Apr. 11, 2025

We have upcoming enhancements to our Morningstar Categories grouping methodologies and framework, aimed at providing greater insights for your investment analysis needs.

Outlined below are the details and the phased implementation timeline to help you stay prepared as well as the updated definitions for the regular April Category changes.

What’s Changing?

• Introducing Morningstar Category Groups: The new Morningstar Category Group will offer a more detailed linkage between categories compared to the existing Global Broad Category Groups. This update provides added granularity that empowers clients to perform deeper and more insightful investment analyses using predefined groups curated by Morningstar’s experts.
• Updating the Global Broad Category Groups: The Global Broad Category Groups will be aligned with the new Category Groups to reflect our best insights into comprehensive groupings of fund types.

Change Release Timeline

We originally planned to release both changes on April 30, 2025. To help our clients prepare, we are splitting this implementation into two phases:

• April 30, 2025 (Phase 1):
  • Regular April updates to Categories and their benchmarks.
  • Launching the new Category Groups.
  • Mapping each Category and its constituent funds into their relevant Category Group.
  • Linking each new Category Group into one of the existing Global Broad Category Groups.
• October 31, 2025 (Phase 2):
  • Renaming the existing Global Broad Category Group field to “Morningstar Category Broad Group.”
  • Updating names and identifiers within the Category Broad Group field.
  • Consolidating Commodities and Property into a single Category Broad Group called “Real Assets.”
  • Re-mapping each Category Group into the new Category Broad Group schema.

Preparing for the Changes

We encourage clients to review the detailed information below, which will help them further understand these changes and the specific actions they need to take to prepare for them.

• Morningstar Fund API Center Product Impact
• Morningstar Data Services Product Impact
• Morningstar Managed Investment Data Feeds Product Impact
• Morningstar On Demand Product Impact
• Category Group Update FAQs and Mappings
• Regular April Category Updates and FAQs
  • Updated Category Definitions:
    • Europe, Asia, and Africa
    • Japan
    • Mexico
    • Spain
    • United States
    • 529 Plans

If you have further questions or require additional assistance, contact Morningstar Support.