After nearly a decade of regulatory delays, legal battles, and governance overhauls, India’s largest stock exchange is finally making serious progress toward a public listing. The National Stock Exchange of India is going to submit its Draft Red Herring Prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India by the end of June 2026, according to people close to the process, who tell CNBC-TV18 that preparations are already underway. If the timeline holds, the exchange aims to list before December 2026, making it one of the most significant market debuts in Indian financial history.
NSE, responding to queries about the development, offered a measured confirmation: “Pursuant to the NOC issued by SEBI, the board approved an initial public offering of the company through an offer for sale on 6 February 2026. No further comments at this stage.”
CNBC-TV18 on X: “#JustIn | #SEBI gives NOC (No Objection Certificate) for #NSE IPO”
How NSE Got Here:
The NSE’s path to listing has been anything but simple. In 2016, the exchange filed a DRHP for a ₹10,000 crore public issue, which was expected to be one of India’s biggest. What followed was a long regulatory process. SEBI began an investigation into the co-location scandal, which alleges that between 2010 and 2014, certain high-frequency traders were granted preferential access to NSE servers, giving them an unfair speed advantage over other market players. The aftermath was devastating. The IPO was canceled, the leadership was replaced, and the NSE worked for years to regain regulatory trust through enforcement actions, fines, and governance reforms.
The breakthrough finally came in January 2026 when NSE reached a ₹1,300 crore settlement with SEBI over the unfair market access case. SEBI subsequently issued a formal No Objection Certificate — the mandatory regulatory clearance required for a market infrastructure institution to file for an IPO. With that hurdle cleared, NSE’s board formally approved the IPO on February 6, 2026.
Ishan Tanna on X: “NSE IPO back in focus. SEBI Chairperson has indicated that the NSE IPO could come within a month. But why has India’s largest stock exchange taken so long to list? NSE IPO: How the delay unfolded – 2016: NSE files DRHP, plans an IPO of over ₹10,000 crore. 2018-2019: Co-location and governance issues emerge; IPO put on hold. 2021: SEBI penalties imposed, leadership overhaul takes place, IPO shelved…”
The IPO Structure: 20 Bankers, Strict Eligibility, And A Record-Setting OFS
The complexity of the NSE listing is reflected in its advisory structure. The exchange has recruited 20 merchant bankers to supervise the process, the most ever assembled for a single IPO in India, breaking the previous record of 18 established during the ICICI Prudential AMC offering in 2025. Eight law firms have also signed on. All 20 bankers recently met for the first time, agreeing on a tentative timetable and starting the preliminary work of identifying risks and compiling disclosures for the DRHP.
The IPO will be structured entirely as an Offer for Sale, meaning NSE will not raise any fresh capital from the listing. Instead, existing shareholders including institutional investors such as Life Insurance Corporation of India, SBI Capital Markets, and Stock Holding Corporation of India will dilute part of their holdings. The total stake being offered is expected to be in the range of 4% to 4.5% of NSE’s equity.
Shareholders wishing to participate in the OFS have been given a deadline of April 27, 2026 at 5 PM to submit their expressions of interest. A key eligibility condition has been set: only shareholders who have held fully paid-up NSE shares continuously since June 15, 2025 exactly one year before the expected DRHP filing will be permitted to tender their shares. Any shares that go unsold during the OFS will be subject to a six-month lock-in period post listing, and shareholders who sell in the OFS will not be allowed to participate as buyers in the IPO.
Once retail shareholder replies are collected, the 20 bankers will spend around three weeks assessing participation levels and finalizing institutional investors for the OFS segment. Clarity on valuation is expected to emerge only after the full list of sellers and the scale of their respective stake dilutions are finalized, a process that insiders believe will not be completed until the end of May. As one individual familiar with the negotiations put it plainly: “Right now, everyone agrees that it is too early to discuss valuations.”
Gurmeet Chadha on X: “Finally.. SEBI gives NOC for NSE IPO. At current price, it’s close to 4.8–5 lakh crore market cap and 35–37 times earnings. Lot of long-only funds would be keen to have this consistent compounder for long term. Disc – no reco.. invested since 2022.”
What’s At Stake And The Legal Scrutiny That Remains:
If NSE lists before December 2026, it would join a strong IPO pipeline that includes Reliance Jio Platforms, SBI Funds Management, and Flipkart – a group of offers that might collectively alter India’s key markets in a single fiscal year. The NSE listing alone, given the exchange’s market position as the world’s largest derivatives exchange by volume and the dominating force in Indian equities with over 93% market dominance in the cash segment, is likely to be one of India’s largest-ever listings in absolute size.
Legal experts, however, are urging caution about the pace at which the DRHP is drafted. Tushar Kumar, a Delhi High Court advocate who has tracked the NSE case closely, noted: “There have been investigations and governance issues in the past that were examined by SEBI, and this necessitates an unusually rigorous disclosure, diligence, and risk-allocation framework in the offer document. With NSE, the objective is not merely successful capital raising but the creation of a defensible, litigation-resilient, and regulatorily robust transaction structure.”
That caution is well-founded. A writ petition challenging SEBI’s NOC itself was filed in the Delhi High Court earlier this year, though it was subsequently dismissed. The grey market valuation of NSE has reportedly climbed to approximately ₹4.7 lakh crore, reflecting the weight of investor anticipation that has built over years of waiting. Whether that anticipation translates into a smooth listing will depend heavily on how thoroughly and defensibly the DRHP is prepared over the coming weeks.
