Gas turbine order books in 2026: GE Vernova, Siemens Energy, Mitsubishi

The big gas turbine makers are sold far ahead. GE Vernova reported 116 GW of gas equipment in backlog or held by slot reservations on 22 July 2026. Siemens Energy reported 69 GW of backlog and 26 GW of reservations on 5 August 2026. Both are adding factory capacity, but new output arrives slowly.

A gas turbine is a large machine that burns natural gas to spin a generator. A handful of companies build the big ones, and demand from AI data centres, utilities and power producers has pushed their order books out for years. This post reads the makers' own results, explains the jargon, and shows what each number does and does not tell you. Each figure is labelled as a company statement, a trade press report, a tracker estimate or a projection, with its date. Nothing here is a forecast or investment advice.

For the wider picture of why data centres build their own power, the overview post on gas turbines and on-site power for AI data centres covers that. This post goes deeper on the supply side: who makes the machines, how the queue works, and how quickly it can shrink.

Key numbers at a glance

• GE Vernova, 22 April 2026 (first quarter results): gas equipment backlog plus slot reservations rose from 83 GW to 100 GW in the quarter (company statement).
• GE Vernova, 22 July 2026 (second quarter results): the same measure rose from 100 GW to 116 GW, and the company expects at least 125 GW under contract by the end of 2026 (company statement and forward looking expectation).
• GE Vernova, second quarter: firm backlog rose from 44 GW to 53 GW, and slot reservations rose from 56 GW to 63 GW (company statement).
• GE Vernova, second quarter: 20 GW of new gas contracts signed, 18 GW of them reservations and 2 GW firm orders; 10 GW of reservations converted to orders; 3 GW of equipment shipped (company statement).
• GE Vernova, 22 July 2026: total company backlog of $176 billion, across all its businesses (company statement).
• GE Vernova, 22 July 2026: on track for 20 GW a year of gas turbine output in the third quarter of 2026, 24 GW in 2028, and actions under way to reach 30 GW in 2030 (company targets).
• Siemens Energy, 5 August 2026 (third quarter of its fiscal 2026, April to June): Gas Services orders of 9,967 million euros against 6,180 million a year earlier (company statement).
• Siemens Energy, same date: Gas Services order backlog of 73 billion euros and a book to bill ratio of 2.65 (company statement).
• Siemens Energy, same date: 15 GW of gas turbines booked in the quarter, 12 GW of it converted from reservations, and 6 GW shipped (company analyst presentation).
• Siemens Energy, same date: 69 GW of backlog and 26 GW of slot reservation agreements (company analyst presentation).
• Mitsubishi Power Americas, 15 May 2026: two M501JAC turbines, about 1,150 MW, for a Wyoming project that would supply a data centre (company announcement with a partner).
• Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, as reported by Utility Dive on 13 August 2026: large frame gas turbine backlog of 35 GW, up from 23 GW a year earlier, with 10 large frame orders booked in April to June 2026 (company figures as reported by trade press).

What the words mean

Gas turbine orders come with vocabulary that sounds more complicated than it is.

A megawatt (MW) is a unit of power. A gigawatt (GW) is 1,000 megawatts. A large modern power plant is often measured in hundreds of megawatts to a gigawatt or more, so 100 GW of turbines is a very large amount of generating equipment.

Backlog means orders that are signed and not yet delivered. The customer has committed, the maker has promised to build, and the machine has not shipped.

A slot reservation agreement is one step earlier. Siemens Energy's own slide uses the abbreviation SRA and the term appears in GE Vernova's release too. The customer pays to hold a place in the factory's production schedule, without yet placing a final order. Think of it as booking a table and leaving a deposit. It is a real commitment of money, but it is a weaker commitment than a firm order, and the release language shows why the two are counted separately. GE Vernova reported that in the second quarter it converted 10 GW of reservations into orders, which means those customers moved from "held a place" to "signed the order".

Book to bill compares new orders with revenue in the same period. Siemens Energy's Gas Services ratio of 2.65 means it booked about 2.65 euros of new orders for every euro of revenue it recognised in the quarter. A ratio above 1 means the order book is growing.

A simple cycle plant runs the turbine on its own. A combined cycle plant captures the turbine's hot exhaust to make steam and generate more power from the same fuel. The first is quicker to build, the second is more efficient. The makers' results releases do not break out orders by cycle, so the split is not public.

GE Vernova: the most detailed public numbers

GE Vernova publishes its gas equipment backlog and reservation totals every quarter, which makes it the easiest maker to follow. The company's first quarter release of 22 April 2026 said the combined backlog and reservations had grown from 83 GW to 100 GW, and that it now expected to reach at least 110 GW by year end. Three months later, on 22 July 2026, the figure had reached 116 GW and the year end expectation was raised to at least 125 GW.

The shape of the second quarter is worth reading closely. The company signed 20 GW of new gas contracts, but only 2 GW of those were firm orders. The other 18 GW were reservations. It also converted 10 GW of earlier reservations into orders and shipped 3 GW of equipment. The result was firm backlog rising from 44 GW to 53 GW and reservations rising from 56 GW to 63 GW. The first quarter looked similar: 21 GW of new contracts, with 19 GW of reservations, 6 GW converted and 4 GW shipped. The reported totals are rounded, so small differences between the movements and the end totals are normal.

Two things stand out. First, most of the new demand arrives as reservations, so the pipeline of reserved places is filling faster than it converts to firm orders. Second, shipments are small compared with contracts. Shipping 3 GW in a quarter while signing 20 GW is how an order book lengthens.

The company is trying to close that gap with factory capacity. The July release says GE Vernova remains on track to deliver gas turbine output at a rate of 20 GW a year in the third quarter of 2026, 24 GW a year in 2028, and is implementing actions to produce 30 GW in 2030. These are company targets. They describe a plan for a production rate, not a count of machines already built. The same release says the company has committed to invest 6 billion dollars in capital spending from 2025 through 2028, including 1 billion from Prolec GE, a grid equipment supplier it bought out in 2026, and part of that spending is aimed at increasing production in its Power and Electrification businesses.

A simple way to feel the scale is to compare the 116 GW held by backlog and reservations with a 20 GW annual output rate. If the company produced at 20 GW a year and signed nothing else, the position it held on 30 June 2026 would take several years to deliver. That is arithmetic on two company figures, not a delivery schedule, since the output rate is still ramping, reservations are not all firm, and some contracts are for later years. But it shows why customers talk about waiting.

The release also says Power segment margins rose from higher volume and favourable price at Gas Power, with segment EBITDA margin up 240 basis points. A basis point is one hundredth of a percentage point, so 240 basis points is 2.4 percentage points. The company states that favourable price helped, which is a company's own description of its pricing. The release gives no per unit turbine prices.

GE Vernova also separates the data centre story. In the release, the company says data centre orders in its Electrification business, which supplies grid and electrical equipment rather than turbines, reached over 5 billion dollars year to date, more than double its 2025 total. That is a different product line from gas turbines, but it shows the same demand wave arriving at the electrical gear as well. The company says it will report third quarter results on 28 October 2026, so these numbers will move soon.

Siemens Energy: a second big book

Siemens Energy reports on a fiscal year that ends in September, so its third quarter covers April to June 2026. It published results on 5 August 2026 and called the quarter a record for orders, revenue and profitability. For its Gas Services business, orders were 9,967 million euros, against 6,180 million euros a year earlier, and the order backlog increased to 73 billion euros. The release attributes the growth to demand from the United States, including large orders related to data centres, and to orders from the Middle East and Asia for new power plants.

The analyst presentation adds gigawatt figures that are directly comparable with GE Vernova's. In the quarter Siemens Energy booked 15 GW, of which 12 GW were converted from reservations, and shipped 6 GW. Its position stood at 69 GW of backlog and 26 GW of slot reservation agreements, which together are about 95 GW. The presentation describes continued strong United States demand, especially for data centre related gas turbines, and large orders from independent power producers and combined cycle plants in the Middle East and Asia.

Put the two makers side by side and the similarities are clear. Each has more than 50 GW of firm backlog. Each holds a large block of reservations. Each is shipping a few gigawatts a quarter. The two companies measure and report differently and their fiscal quarters do not align, so this post does not add them up or imply a market total. Other makers exist, and Mitsubishi reports in a different format again (see below).

On capacity, the Siemens Energy presentation says production capacity expansion in Gas Services is fully on track. It splits turbines into medium gas turbines, in a size range of 20 to 100 MW, and large gas turbines, in a range of 100 to 600 MW. It says additional medium turbine capacity came online in the second half of its fiscal 2026 and that the expansion for large turbines becomes effective in fiscal 2027. The slide shows planned production growth as bar charts without a single headline number, so no capacity figure is quoted here. The company's outlook assumes Gas Services revenue growth of 16 to 18 percent with a profit margin before special items of 14 to 16 percent, according to the release.

The size classes matter for data centres. Medium turbines are closer to the scale of a single campus building block. Large turbines are the machines used for grid scale plants. A developer that wants a few hundred megawatts quickly may look at mid sized machines, while a utility building a combined cycle plant looks at the large class.

Mitsubishi Power and the rest of the field

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, through Mitsubishi Power, is the third large name in this market. It does not publish a quarterly gigawatt table in the same form as GE Vernova and Siemens Energy, but its executives gave figures on the call for its first quarter of fiscal 2026 (April to June). Utility Dive reported on 13 August 2026 that the company's large frame gas turbine backlog stood at 35 GW, up from 23 GW a year earlier, and that it sold 35 large frame turbines totalling 16 GW in fiscal 2025. It booked 10 large frame orders in the quarter, four for the United States and six for Japan, scheduled for delivery between 2028 and 2030.

The tone of the call matters as much as the numbers. Chief financial officer Hiroshi Nishio said demand was broadly in line with, or slightly above, the strong level the company had expected, and that among its core US utility customers it was "being selective in the projects we contract". The company still plans to double production capacity compared with 2024 levels and said it would give a fuller update on growth plans in the second half of the year. A maker that is choosing between customers is another sign of a seller's market. Because the 35 GW covers large frame machines only and comes via trade press, it is not directly comparable with the GE Vernova and Siemens Energy totals.

Mitsubishi also has a named data centre project. On 15 May 2026, Tallgrass and Mitsubishi Power Americas announced that two M501JAC gas turbines had been allocated for Phase 1 of the Cheyenne Power Hub in southeast Wyoming. The announcement describes about 1,150 MW of power, fuelled by gas delivered through the Rockies Express Pipeline, and says delivery of components for the first turbine unit could start as early as July 2026. It says the plant would supply dedicated power to a large data centre in the Switchgrass Industrial Park, and that the project is expected to cost over 7 billion dollars. It also notes a grid connection that would allow future renewable integration, and nearby carbon capture work that could support later decarbonisation. Those are company claims about intentions, not completed facts.

On 15 October 2026, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Ingeteam signed a memorandum of understanding to work on power solutions for United States data centres. A memorandum of understanding is a non-binding statement of intent. The release says financial terms, duration and deployment timelines were not disclosed. It does describe a technical problem that makes this more than a turbine story. AI computing loads can swing up and down quickly, and the release says those dynamic load profiles can cause harmonic distortion and voltage imbalance, which means power quality problems in the electrical supply. Batteries and power electronics are part of the answer, a point covered in the post on fuel cells, batteries, engines and solar for data centres.

Turbines are not the only gas machine. The Cleanview tracker of behind the meter data centres lists mobile gas generators, aeroderivative turbines, reciprocating engines and refurbished industrial turbines. It reports Caterpillar with the largest manufacturer share of permitted behind the meter capacity at 33 percent, over 8.8 GW, and Bloom Energy, a fuel cell maker, at 14 percent. Cleanview describes its own methods as relying on permit documents, filings, press releases and satellite images, and the full dataset sits behind a paywall, so treat the shares as an analyst view, not an official statistic.

Aeroderivative or heavy duty: why the type matters

Two broad turbine families matter here, and the difference explains a lot about speed.

Heavy duty machines are large industrial turbines built for power plants. They are efficient in combined cycle form and are the machines in the biggest order books. They also take the longest to supply.

Aeroderivative machines descend from jet engine designs. They are smaller, lighter, and built to be shipped in modules. GE Vernova's gas power page describes this approach in company terms. It says the LM2500XPRESS can be installed in about 14 days by 20 people with up to 95 percent of assembly done in the factory, that the TM2500 can be installed and commissioned in as few as 11 days, and that the page lists data centres as a target industry. Those are marketing figures from the maker, covering on site installation, and they do not include the time it takes to obtain the machine in the first place.

The Stargate Abilene campus shows the aeroderivative route in practice. Cleanview, citing permit documents, says Crusoe installed five LM2500XPRESS turbines and Solar Titan 350 turbines with a combined initial capacity of 360 MW. It says Crusoe ordered 10 LM2500XPRESS units from GE Vernova in December 2024 and 19 more in June 2025, for 29 turbines and nearly 1 GW. Cleanview adds that it is inferring where the units will go, and that the campus is also grid connected. The practical lesson is that developers who can place orders early and in volume get machines sooner, and that mid sized units are being used for speed.

What is firm and what is uncertain

Firm, because the companies state it in results releases:

• GE Vernova and Siemens Energy both report order books measured in tens of gigawatts, with large reservation blocks and quarterly record orders.
• Both say demand from data centres is part of the story, alongside power plant demand in the Middle East and Asia and other markets.
• Both describe capacity expansion programmes.

Uncertain:

• A reservation is not an order. GE Vernova counted 63 GW of reservations and 53 GW of firm backlog on 30 June 2026. How many reservations convert, and when, is not known.
• Production targets are plans. The 24 GW in 2028 and 30 GW in 2030 are targets, and the path depends on factory ramp, suppliers and skilled labour.
• Not every turbine is for a data centre. Utilities, industrial customers and overseas power producers also order. The releases do not give a precise data centre share of gas turbine demand.
• Mitsubishi's 35 GW backlog is a large frame figure reported by trade press, not a like for like total, and smaller makers are not covered here.
• Delivery dates for a given customer depend on contract terms that are not public.

What to watch next

• GE Vernova third quarter results on 28 October 2026: whether the total moves toward the 125 GW year end expectation, and how many reservations convert to firm orders.
• Siemens Energy's next quarterly results, for its backlog, reservations and the start of the large turbine capacity expansion in fiscal 2027.
• Whether GE Vernova's reported output reaches 20 GW a year in the third quarter, as it said it was on track to do.
• Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' promised update on growth plans in the second half of its fiscal year, which would show whether it adds capacity beyond doubling 2024 levels.
• Whether announced behind the meter projects move from permit to operation. Cleanview's scenario puts 13 GW operating by the end of 2027 if projects with signed tenants stay on schedule and as little as 5 GW if delays continue.

Quick check

Sources

• GE Vernova second quarter 2026 earnings press release (GE Vernova, 22 July 2026)
• GE Vernova first quarter 2026 earnings press release (GE Vernova, 22 April 2026)
• GE Vernova third quarter 2026 results announcement (GE Vernova, 13 October 2026)
• GE Vernova Gas Power (GE Vernova, accessed 19 October 2026)
• Siemens Energy earnings release for the third quarter of fiscal 2026 (Siemens Energy, 5 August 2026)
• Siemens Energy analyst presentation for the third quarter of fiscal 2026 (Siemens Energy, 5 August 2026)
• Tallgrass and Mitsubishi Power Americas turbine allocation for the Cheyenne Power Hub (Mitsubishi Power, 15 May 2026)
• Mitsubishi says gas turbine backlog reaches 35 GW (Utility Dive, 13 August 2026)
• Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Ingeteam memorandum of understanding on data centre power (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, 15 October 2026)
• Behind the meter data centers report summary (Cleanview, mid 2026)
• Stargate Abilene behind the meter entry (Cleanview, 2026)

Last reviewed: 19 October 2026.