The London Stock Exchange has announced plans to launch LSE 24, a new trading venue designed to operate near-continuously from Monday to Friday, extending market access well beyond the existing 08:00 to 16:30 window on the Main Market. The venue will run from 17:00 to 07:50 each weekday, with a 30-minute pause for end-of-day processing, and will be built on LSEG’s existing financial market infrastructure.
Exchange Traded Products will be the first asset class to go live, targeted for H1 2027 subject to regulatory approval. Client testing is scheduled to begin by the end of 2026. The LSE cited London’s established position as a leading international ETP hub and strong global demand for cross-timezone liquidity as the rationale for starting with that asset class, with equities identified as the next expansion step.
Structure and technology
LSE 24 will draw on central limit order book and request-for-quote functionality, combining two complementary models: the former supports continuous, transparent price discovery, while the latter allows on-demand liquidity sourcing for less liquid instruments. The venue is positioned separately from the Main Market, which will continue on its existing hours.
A notable element of the announcement is the explicit framing around agentic trading. LSE 24 is designed to provide native connectivity for agent-based workflows, allowing automated systems to interact with market data, order management and execution without requiring human intervention at each step. That language reflects a broader industry shift: algorithmic trading is increasingly giving way to AI-driven systems that can interpret signals and act autonomously within defined parameters, and exchanges are beginning to build for that model directly rather than treating it as an edge use case.
Subject to regulatory clearance, the venue will also connect to LSEG’s Digital Securities Depository, a separate infrastructure project focused on digitising issuance, settlement and asset servicing. The DSD is still in development and represents a longer-term ambition to bridge traditional equity market rails with digital settlement networks.
Julia Hoggett, chief executive of LSE plc and head of digital and securities markets at LSEG, said the launch “marks an important step in the evolution of our markets, providing clients with greater flexibility beyond traditional trading hours and supporting more digital, connected global markets.”
Market context and regulatory path
LSE 24 enters a competitive field shaped by comparable moves in the United States, where NYSE, Nasdaq and several alternative venues have pursued or already operate extended-hours sessions. The structural driver is consistent: institutional investors and algorithmic trading desks managing positions across Asia-Pacific, European and US time zones have long faced friction in managing overnight risk in London-listed instruments, particularly ETPs tracking US or Asian indices.
The regulatory path in the UK will be a determining factor in both the timeline and the scope of permitted activity. Any new recognised investment exchange venue, or material extension of an existing one, requires engagement with the Financial Conduct Authority. The UK’s post-Brexit regulatory posture has, through the Edinburgh and Mansion House reform agendas, been broadly supportive of market structure modernisation, which gives the LSE a constructive backdrop. However, agentic connectivity and digital settlement rails are areas where supervisory frameworks are still catching up with commercial practice, and LSEG will need to demonstrate adequate governance and systemic risk controls before the FCA is likely to approve the full feature set.
The involvement of the DSD also touches on the broader debate around tokenised and digitally issued securities, an area where the Bank of England and FCA have been running a regulatory sandbox, the Digital Securities Sandbox, since 2024. Whether LSE 24 and the DSD will ultimately participate in or operate alongside that sandbox will be worth watching as both projects mature.