Copper Stocks: Top 10 to Watch in 2026

• Copper stocks led by BHP, Southern Copper and Rio Tinto
• Record copper prices near $6.70 a pound in 2026
• Freeport-McMoRan’s Grasberg mine restarting after 2025 collapse
• Zijin Mining’s market cap near $120 billion on gold gains
• Teck Resources merging into Anglo Teck within days
• Ero Copper the smallest, highest-risk name on the list

Copper stocks have had one of their strongest years on record in 2026, as prices on the COMEX and London Metal Exchange repeatedly set new all-time highs on the back of surging demand from electric vehicles, grid buildouts and AI data centers. That rally has lifted the entire sector, but the ten companies below carry very different levels of copper exposure, geographic risk and balance-sheet strength — factors that matter as much as the metal price itself when weighing these stocks.

How We Ranked These Top 10 Copper Stocks

We ranked these copper stocks by total market capitalization as of September 2026, verified against current exchange data rather than relying on a single research source. Because several of these companies are diversified miners rather than pure-play copper producers, we’ve noted each company’s actual copper exposure alongside its market value, and flagged where a stock’s total market cap overstates or understates its copper leverage. For a ranking based purely on 2025 copper production volume rather than market value, see CMN’s Top 10 Copper Mining Companies list, which covers largely the same set of producers from a different angle.

1. BHP Group — Australia (ASX/NYSE/LSE: BHP)

BHP is the largest company on this list by market value, trading with a market capitalization of roughly $235 billion as its share price has climbed alongside record copper prices. The Melbourne-based miner holds a 57.5% stake in Escondida in Chile, the world’s largest copper mine, and produced an attributable 1.47 million metric tons of copper in 2025 across Escondida, its wholly owned Pampa Norte operation and the Olympic Dam polymetallic mine in South Australia. BHP also holds a 50/50 joint venture with Lundin Mining over the Filo del Sol project in Argentina, agreed in January 2025. The main risk for investors is BHP’s diversification: copper is only one of several commodities driving earnings, alongside iron ore and coal, so the stock offers less direct copper leverage than the pure-play miners further down this list.

2. Southern Copper — Peru/Mexico (NYSE: SCCO)

Southern Copper carries the highest market capitalization of any pure-play copper producer on this list, trading around $165 billion after a share price rally of more than 100% over the past year. The Grupo Mexico subsidiary produced 953,337 metric tons of copper in 2025 from its Buenavista and La Caridad mines in Mexico and its Toquepala and Cuajone mines in Peru, and the company says it controls the industry’s largest copper reserve base. That growth has pushed Southern Copper to a premium valuation relative to peers, which leaves less room for error if copper prices retreat. Exploration projects in Argentina, Chile and Ecuador give it multiple avenues for reserve growth beyond its two core countries.

3. Rio Tinto — Australia/UK (ASX/NYSE/LSE: RIO)

Rio Tinto’s copper output jumped to 735,000 metric tons in 2025, up from 624,000 metric tons in 2024, largely because of the ramp-up of the underground expansion at Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia, where Rio holds a 66% stake. The company’s largest copper interest remains its 30% share of Escondida, alongside its wholly owned Bingham Canyon mine in Utah, one of the deepest open-pit mines in the world. Rio Tinto’s market capitalization sits at roughly $140 billion. In early 2026 Rio held merger talks with Glencore that would have created a mining group worth more than $200 billion, but the two sides ended discussions in February without a deal, leaving Rio to pursue copper growth organically instead.

4. Zijin Mining Group — China (HKEX: 2899, OTC: ZIJMF)

Zijin Mining’s market value has surged to roughly $120 billion, driven less by copper than by gold: the company’s gold division overtook copper as its largest profit contributor for the first time in 2025 as international gold prices climbed. Copper production still totaled 885,567 metric tons attributable to Zijin last year, anchored by its 39.6% stake in the Kamoa-Kakula complex in the Democratic Republic of Congo, its wholly owned Zijin Copper business in Serbia, and a 58% interest in the Julong mine in Tibet, which hosts more than 25 million metric tons of copper reserves. Investors buying Zijin specifically for copper exposure should note that gold, silver and now lithium are increasingly diluting that exposure as the group diversifies.

5. Freeport-McMoRan — USA (NYSE: FCX)

Freeport-McMoRan is the largest pure-play copper producer among publicly traded Western miners, with a market capitalization near $110 billion. Its flagship Grasberg complex in Indonesia, a joint venture with state-owned Indonesia Asahan Aluminum, is still recovering from a fatal wet-material collapse in September 2025 that killed seven workers and shut the main Grasberg Block Cave; a phased restart is expected through the second quarter of 2026. Freeport’s other major assets include the 55%-owned Cerro Verde complex in Peru and the 72%-owned Morenci mine in Arizona, and total attributable copper production came to 1.08 million metric tons in 2025. The Grasberg restart timeline is the single biggest swing factor for the stock for the rest of the year.

6. Glencore — Switzerland/UK (LSE: GLEN, OTC: GLNCY)

Glencore combines large-scale mining with the world’s biggest commodity trading and marketing business, giving it a different risk profile than the pure miners on this list, and a market capitalization of roughly $90 billion. Copper production fell to 851,600 metric tons in 2025 from 951,600 metric tons in 2024, a decline the company attributed to mine sequencing at Antapaccay, Collahuasi and Antamina in Peru and Chile, plus the closure of its Mount Isa copper operation in Australia. In early 2026 Glencore held merger talks with Rio Tinto that would have created a $200 billion-plus mining giant; when those talks collapsed in February, Glencore instead returned $2 billion to shareholders and reaffirmed its own growth plans around the Collahuasi joint venture.

7. Teck Resources — Canada (NYSE: TECK, TSX: TECK.A/TECK.B)

Teck Resources has spent the past two years repositioning itself as a copper and zinc pure-play, anchored by the Quebrada Blanca 2 expansion in Chile, after selling its steelmaking coal business. That transformation is now being folded into something bigger. Teck and Anglo American agreed in September 2025 to combine in an all-share “merger of equals” that will create Anglo Teck, a Canada-headquartered company with more than 70% of its revenue exposure in copper. Shareholders of both companies approved the deal in December 2025, and Teck’s own profile covers the mine-level detail behind the deal; the company told investors on 1 September 2026 that completion was down to its final steps. Anyone buying Teck stock at this point is, in practice, buying into Anglo Teck.

8. Lundin Mining — Canada (TSX: LUN, OTC: LUNMF)

Lundin Mining’s market capitalization has climbed to roughly $21 billion (around C$29.7 billion), a level that puts it well ahead of smaller growth names such as Ivanhoe Mines despite Lundin’s lower public profile. Its flagship assets are the Candelaria and Caserones copper mines in Chile, plus a Brazilian nickel operation and US assets gained through recent portfolio moves. Lundin also holds a 50% stake in the Filo del Sol project in Argentina alongside BHP. The company funds an active share buyback program targeting up to $150 million a year, which has offset some dilution from employee share issuance. Its geographic concentration in Chile leaves it exposed to the same water-scarcity and permitting risks facing peers such as Glencore and the future Anglo Teck.

9. Ivanhoe Mines — Canada (TSX: IVN, OTC: IVPAF)

Ivanhoe Mines trades at a market capitalization of roughly $18 billion, up from about $12 billion in mid-2026, as its Kamoa-Kakula copper complex in the Democratic Republic of Congo works through a rebuild following operational setbacks. Kamoa-Kakula holds 35 million metric tons of contained copper in indicated resources, and Ivanhoe’s exploration team is drilling an even larger discovery, the Makoko district, within 8 kilometers of the existing mine. Ivanhoe also owns the Platreef platinum-group-metals project and the Kipushi zinc mine, both in Africa. Founder and executive co-chair Robert Friedland has said he expects the company’s market value to reach $50-100 billion as the copper market tightens, though that target depends heavily on execution at Kamoa-Kakula and on continued political stability in the DRC.

10. Ero Copper — Canada/Brazil (NYSE: ERO)

Ero Copper is the smallest and highest-risk name on this list, with a market capitalization of roughly $3.8 billion. The company operates the MCSA mining complex in Brazil’s Bahia state and has benefited from an unexpected gold windfall alongside its core copper business, which lifted its stock sharply in 2026 and drew hedge fund interest, including from Arrowstreet Capital. Ero’s smaller scale means operational hiccups at a single mine move the stock far more than they would for a diversified major like BHP or Glencore, and its Brazilian asset concentration leaves it more exposed to single-jurisdiction political and currency risk than peers spread across multiple countries.

The Outlook for Copper Stocks in 2026

Two structural shifts will shape copper stocks heading into 2027: consolidation and policy. The pending Anglo Teck merger will remove Teck as a standalone name and create a top-five global copper producer almost overnight, while the aborted Rio Tinto-Glencore talks show appetite for further tie-ups hasn’t gone away even after that specific deal fell through. On the policy side, the US Geological Survey added copper to its official critical minerals list for the first time in November 2025, a designation that can unlock federal funding and streamlined permitting for domestic projects and adds a new tailwind for US-exposed names. With supply growth still constrained by permitting timelines and aging mines, according to USGS data, most of these copper stocks remain leveraged to a metal that the market expects to stay structurally tight for years, not quarters.