Global Contact Center Market Activity | October 2026

Site Selection Group (SSG) tracks global contact center expansions, new openings, consolidations, and downsizing activity through ongoing market research across onshore, nearshore, and offshore locations. Our monthly data is designed to help contact center leaders better understand where the industry is growing, shifting, and recalibrating worldwide.

September 2026 marked a solid rebound from a quiet August, with 5,600 announced jobs across nine new sites and expansions — more than double the prior month — partially offset by 450 jobs tied to two closures and downsizings. The Philippines led all countries with 2,600 announced jobs, headlined by iSON Group's 2,000-job expansion, while Cairo, Egypt, added another 2,000 jobs from ibex and InteLogix. Every one of September's nine announcements came from a BPO. Beyond the data, the month's news cycle was dominated by regulatory and structural pressure: France's cold-calling ban is reshaping Morocco's call center sector, Jamaica is facing hard questions about the future of its BPO model, and consolidation continued with acquisitions by Teleperformance and Fusion CX.

Through the first nine months of 2026, SSG has tracked more than 52,153 announced jobs across 99 expansions and new sites globally — with 22 closures or downsizings accounting for 7,584 displaced positions. Net new job creation now stands at more than 44,569 positions for the year, and 2026 has officially crossed the 50,000-announced-jobs mark with a full quarter still to go.

August 2026 Snapshot

New Sites & Expansion Announcements

Closure & Downsizing Announcements

Regional Highlights

Philippines: Largest Country Total of the Month

The Philippines accounted for 2,600 announced jobs in September, led by iSON Group's 2,000-job expansion and Innov8 IT Solutions' 600-job new site in Bacolod City. Alorica also opened a new site in Tuguegarao, a northern Luzon city well outside the traditional Metro Manila and Cebu hubs. The mix is telling: operators continue to push into provincial cities where talent is available, competition for agents is lower, and attrition tends to be more manageable. Year to date, the Philippines has now posted more than 13,000 announced jobs — the most of any single country SSG tracks in 2026.

Philippine delivery capacity is also changing hands through M&A. Fusion CX acquired VA Platinum, an offshore staffing and managed workforce provider with delivery centers in Cebu and Davao that primarily serves Australian clients. The deal — Fusion CX's 16th acquisition — gives the company a physical presence in New South Wales and a Philippines-to-Australia delivery channel it did not previously have.

Egypt Adds 2,000 More Jobs in Cairo

Cairo landed two 1,000-job announcements in September. ibex announced its entry into Egypt with a new delivery center in Nasr City that is scheduled to begin operations in October and scale to 1,000 employees within its first nine months, serving clients across healthtech, technology, retail, and other sectors — including its European and Middle Eastern client base. It is ibex's first delivery market in North Africa. InteLogix added a 1,000-job expansion in the city as well.

With September's activity, Egypt has now accounted for roughly 10,700 announced jobs in 2026, following TTEC's 3,500-job expansion in April, iQor's 5,000-seat New Cairo site in June, and Konecta's July expansion. Africa as a whole has posted more than 19,000 announced jobs year to date — more than any other region SSG tracks. Egypt's combination of Arabic, English, and European-language talent, competitive labor costs, and time-zone proximity to EMEA clients continues to make it the breakout delivery market of the year.

Africa Policy Watch: Morocco Feels the French Cold-Calling Ban, Kenya Formalizes BPO Policy

While Egypt grows, Morocco is absorbing a regulatory shock. France's ban on commercial cold calling without prior consumer consent took effect on August 11, and because roughly 80% of Morocco's call center activity is tied to the French market, the effects are being felt directly in Casablanca and Rabat. Morocco's outsourcing federation estimates that around 10,000 jobs are exposed out of roughly 150,000 positions in the sector, noting that outbound cold calling represents a relatively small share of total activity; earlier government estimates had warned the exposure could run as high as 40,000 to 50,000 jobs. Smaller operators dependent on outbound sales campaigns are the most vulnerable, and at least one center at Casablanca's Technopark has already closed.

At the same time, larger players are consolidating. Teleperformance, through its Majorel Africa subsidiary, is acquiring Unifitel — Crédit Agricole's Casablanca-based customer service and collections center for the financial services sector. The deal is small on its own, but it reinforces a pattern: diversified, scaled operators are positioned to pick up assets as the Moroccan market adjusts.

Elsewhere in Africa, Kenya's Cabinet approved a national BPO policy designed to position the country as a larger player in global outsourcing while establishing a framework for protecting digital workers. The policy addresses special economic zones, tax incentives, regulatory clarity, and skills development — a meaningful step for a market that has historically been held back by policy gaps and workforce turnover.

Nearshore: MicroSourcing Enters Colombia as Jamaica Faces Headwinds

MicroSourcing opened its first Latin American delivery center in Bogotá, Colombia, with 300 announced jobs. The site — the company's first outside the Philippines — extends its footprint to 13 delivery locations and is built to serve North American and European clients from a nearshore time zone with bilingual talent. A Philippine-headquartered BPO choosing Colombia for its next growth market is a strong signal of how established Bogotá has become as a nearshore destination.

Jamaica tells a more cautionary story. Recent reporting from the Jamaica Gleaner questioned whether the island's traditional BPO model is reaching the end of the road. More than 245,000 square feet of large-format office and BPO-oriented space is now being offered across Kingston and Montego Bay, and government figures indicate estimated spending by the country's global digital services sector fell from roughly US$1 billion to US$780 million in the fiscal year ended March 2026. For corporate occupiers, that combination may create near-term leverage on real estate — but it also raises longer-term questions about how Jamaica's labor market evolves as voice-centric work is automated and the industry pushes toward higher-value knowledge process work.

Europe and Asia-Pacific: TDCX Opens in Lisbon, transcosmos Heads to Bali

TDCX opened a new campus in central Lisbon — its first operation in Portugal and its third in Europe after Spain and Romania. The site is designed as a multilingual hub for customer experience, sales, and complex support across EMEA, and TDCX is already planning a second Lisbon building as early as 2027. Portugal continues to attract nearshore demand from European clients seeking multilingual talent in a Western European time zone at a lower cost point than Northern Europe.

In Asia-Pacific, transcosmos opened a new site in Bali, Indonesia. It is the Japanese BPO's third new-site announcement of 2026, following Urasoe City and Sendai City in Japan earlier in the year, and reflects continued diversification of APAC delivery beyond the region's largest hubs.

U.S. Market: Dallas-Fort Worth Wins and Loses

The U.S. activity in September was concentrated in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro. Qualfon opened a new center in Irving with more than 700 jobs and is offering free college degrees to employees and their families — an aggressive retention play in one of the most competitive contact center labor markets in the country. A few miles away, Truist downsized 200 positions in Arlington. The pattern mirrors what SSG has seen all year: BPOs are adding domestic capacity selectively, while enterprise financial services and telecom brands continue to rationalize in-house footprints.

Outside the U.S., Opendoor closed a 250-job operation in India — the month's largest single reduction.

Conclusion

Site Selection Group tracks global contact center openings, expansions, consolidations, and labor market shifts each month to help companies understand where the industry is growing, evolving, and becoming more competitive. Our research spans onshore, nearshore, and offshore markets to provide timely insight into location trends shaping the contact center industry.

If your organization is evaluating contact center location strategy, outsourcing opportunities, labor market conditions, or portfolio optimization, our team is available to help you make informed decisions. SSG operates exclusively on behalf of corporate clients — we never represent landlords or outsourcing providers — so our advisory is always conflict-free.

About Site Selection Group

Site Selection Group is a full-service location advisory, economic incentive, and corporate real estate firm headquartered in Dallas, Texas. SSG specializes in the contact center industry and works exclusively with companies operating contact centers on location strategy, outsourcing advisory, and contact center technology evaluation. Learn more at siteselectiongroup.com.