Middle East On Demand Strategy Consulting AI Index 2026: why the traditional firms still own the category

Last updated: 8 September 2026

We first published this index on 4 September 2026 from a smaller, single-day sample. This is the re-run, on a wider and fixed window: 4 to 8 September 2026, ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overview, 917 answers to the same set of buyer questions. We tracked 32 consulting firms, talent platforms and expert networks, and every one of them was named at least once. Every brand in this report is scored against that same 917-answer denominator. The finding worth leading on has changed shape since the first version: this category is not won by the on-demand platforms a buyer might expect. It is led by the traditional strategy firms and the Big Four.

The numbers in brief

• McKinsey leads at 30.10 percent of the 917 answers, ahead of BCG on 29.66 percent and Bain on 24.75 percent.
• Six of the top ten named firms are traditional consulting brands: McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Strategy&, PwC and Deloitte.
• The on-demand platforms Catalant and Toptal still place fourth and fifth, at 20.50 percent and 17.99 percent.
• The median across all 32 tracked brands is 6.54 percent.
• LinkedIn is the most retrieved source, appearing in 15.81 percent of answers.

What changed, and what this index measures

The question set covers the moment a Middle East buyer needs strategy capacity: urgent talent, GCC and public sector delivery, AI and product expertise, vetting and contracting a consultant, and choosing between a specialist network, an independent consultant and a large firm. Those five themes split into 186, 186, 182, 182 and 181 answers, which sum to the full 917.

The first version of this index used a smaller sample collected on a single day. This version uses a fixed, wider window, 4 to 8 September 2026, and the two are not blended. Every figure below comes from the 917-answer set alone.

Three measures, in plain words:

• How often AI names them: the share of the 917 answers in which the firm is named.
• Share of the answer: the firm's portion of all 3,644 mentions recorded across every answer.
• Average position: where the firm tends to land in a list when it is named. Lower is better.

Every firm was measured against the same 917-answer denominator. No firm paid to be included, and the names in this report identify research subjects, not customers and not endorsements.

Who the engines actually name

The table above holds the same top three as our first pass, in the same order. That part of the finding has not moved. What the wider window sharpens is the shape of the rest of the field. Outside this published fifteen, no firm clears 6.87 percent, the ceiling held by Consultport, with Selectra Strategy and Guidepoint tied on 6.22 percent next, then Heidrick & Struggles on 6.00 percent and Oliver Wyman on 5.13 percent. The tail runs long after that: Accenture, Talmix, Nextyn and Umbrex each sit between 4 and 5 percent, Outsized and StrategyConnect fall to 3.49 and 2.94 percent, and six firms, including Synchrony and the smallest names in the cohort, sit under 1.5 percent. The median across all 32 tracked brands is 6.54 percent, meaning half the field is named in barely one answer in fifteen. None of the 32 tracked firms went unnamed across the 917 answers, which is worth stating plainly, because it means every comparison in this report is a comparison of degree, not of presence versus absence.

The finding that matters more than the ranking

Look at the top ten and a pattern jumps out. Three of the four biggest global strategy firms sit in first, second and third place. A fourth traditional name, Strategy&, PwC's strategy arm, sits seventh. PwC itself sits eighth and Deloitte ninth. That is six of the top ten names coming from established consulting brands, not from the on-demand platforms and expert networks that this category is supposedly reshaping.

This matters because the plausible story going in was the opposite one: that AI engines, when asked how to get strategy help fast, would reach first for the platforms built to deliver exactly that. They do not. Catalant and Toptal hold fourth and fifth, a real result, but a result that trails the traditional tier by ten full percentage points. A buyer asking a general question about Middle East strategy support is more likely to get a household name than a specialist platform.

There is a second layer worth being precise about. "The market leader" means different things depending on which peer set a reader has in mind. Against the raw category, McKinsey leads outright. Against the narrower set of regional and on-demand comparators, a different picture holds: Selectra Strategy is the strongest name on regional fit specifically, and Outsized is a more relevant comparator on buying choice than McKinsey is. Any comparison against "the market leader" should say plainly which peer set it means, because the two answers are both true and they point in different directions.

Where on-demand platforms do win

The category-wide ranking hides a real result underneath it. Break the 917 answers into their five themes and Toptal leads outright on one of them: vetting, contracting and delivery risk, where it is named in 18.28 percent of that topic's 186 answers, ahead of every traditional firm on that specific question. McKinsey leads three of the remaining four, including 62.09 percent on the theme covering strategy talent and urgent capacity and 35.91 percent on regional fit and public sector delivery. The fifth goes to BCG, named in 24.73 percent of the 182 answers about AI, data, product and venture expertise.

The practical read is that the on-demand platforms have not lost the whole category. They have won the part of it that is about their actual strength, assessing and contracting an individual consultant quickly, while the traditional firms hold everything upstream of that: brand recognition, regional delivery history and public sector relationships. A specialist platform pitching itself as a general alternative to McKinsey is fighting the wrong battle. Pitching itself as the fastest, lowest-risk way to vet and contract a specific expert is fighting the one it can actually win.

Where the answers come from

Three things stand out.

First, LinkedIn leads everything. It is retrieved almost a third more often than the next source, Selectra Strategy's own site, and by a wide margin more than any single traditional firm's site. Professional, first-person material about GCC consulting engagements is easier to find there than on most company sites.

Second, specialist platform sites make up most of the rest of the table. Selectra Strategy, Umbrex, Consultport, Nextyn, Consulting Heads and Toptal all outrank PwC's own site, which suggests these platforms have built pages that answer the buyer's exact question more directly than a large firm's broader marketing site does.

Third, government sources appear because buyers ask about Saudi procurement and public sector delivery rules by name. A single institutional domain, my.gov.sa, is retrieved in 4.47 percent of answers, on a par with several named platforms.

What this report can and cannot tell you

These results are directional, not definitive. They describe one question set, on three engines, over a fixed five-day window.

Read this way, the data can answer a bounded set of questions:

• Which of the 32 tracked firms and platforms the engines name without being prompted with a brand name.
• Whether the category currently favours large traditional firms or on-demand platforms, and on which specific questions that split reverses.
• Which source types the engines reach for when they build a Middle East strategy consulting answer.
• How this wider window compares with our first, smaller pass on the same category.

It cannot do several other things, and it is worth being blunt about them. It cannot prove that being named more often converts into more signed engagements. It cannot establish a causal link between any single page a firm published and its position here. It cannot tell any individual platform that it should appear on every one of the five themes, because a vetting-and-contracting specialist has no natural claim on a public sector delivery question.

The operating instruction is therefore not to chase the leaderboard as one blended score. Split the questions by theme, read the exact answers for the theme you can genuinely win, and repair the weakest layer of evidence underneath it.

What this means if you run a consulting business in the Middle East

If you run an on-demand platform or an expert network, the theme-level result is the one to build on, not the overall ranking. Toptal's lead on vetting and contracting shows that a focused platform can outrank McKinsey, BCG and Bain when the question is about its actual strength. Find the theme where your evidence is strongest, and make sure your own pages answer that exact question rather than a general "why choose us." The same pattern held in our crypto wallet index, where a brand rarely named overall still won specific themes it was built for.

If you run a traditional firm or a Big Four practice, the size of your current lead is also a warning about complacency. A leader named in three answers out of ten is still absent from seven. The UK tech recruitment index and the contact centre QA software index both show the same shape: a recognisable leader with a real gap underneath it that a sharper competitor can close with better pages, not just a bigger name. Our London burger index and London cookie bakery index found the same flatness in categories with no obvious household name at all, and our Texas dining index found it in a market four times this one's size. Being the biggest name does not mean owning the answer.

If you are comparing platforms across this category, treat the source table as a research queue, not a mass-pitch list. Consultancy Middle East is the one clearly editorial outlet in the top of the table, and a pitch that hands its editors a specific, checkable regional finding will get read. A pitch that asks to be added to a list will not.

Sources

• Schmitdy category tracking, Middle East on demand strategy consulting question set, 4 to 8 September 2026. The 917 answers, five themes and 32 tracked firms behind every figure in this report.
• McKinsey & Company, mckinsey.com. Official site of the most-named firm in the index.
• Boston Consulting Group, bcg.com. Official site, second in the published table.
• Bain & Company, bain.com. Official site, third in the published table.
• Catalant, gocatalant.com. Official site, fourth in the published table and the highest-placed on-demand platform.
• Toptal, toptal.com. Official site, fifth in the published table and the leader on vetting and contracting specifically.
• Business Talent Group, businesstalentgroup.com. Official site, sixth in the published table.
• Strategy&, strategyand.pwc.com. Official site, seventh in the published table.
• PwC, pwc.com. Official site, eighth in the published table.
• Deloitte, deloitte.com. Official site, ninth in the published table.
• GLG, glg.com. Official site, tenth in the published table.
• Upwork, upwork.com. Official site, eleventh in the published table.
• Selectra Strategy, selectrastrategy.com. Official site, second most-retrieved source and the strongest name on regional fit specifically.
• Consultancy Middle East, consultancy-me.com. Official site, most-retrieved editorial source.
• LinkedIn, linkedin.com. Most-retrieved source across the tracked answers.

Every firm named in this report is a research subject. Inclusion is not an endorsement, and no firm paid to appear.

If you want to know which of these questions your own firm or platform already shows up in, we can run the same measurement for your market.