Q3 Concentration: Coverage Healed +16 pp — FTS Top-1 Still 23%

Our 2026 concentration print answered the first distribution question: FTS Top-1 (United States) ~23.1%, Top-3 ~44.7%, host-country Top-3 ~18.5%, and LMIC hosts still ~68% of refugees under a 40.4% GHO coverage narrative. The Q3 vintage and August donor unpack then moved the levels: May→Aug coverage healed +16 pp (24.4% → 40.4%) as funded FTS jumped from $8.21B to $14.08B. This Q3 concentration lens asks the desk follow-up: did that heal redistribute who sits at the top of the cash and people ladders — or mostly rearrange absolute dollars under a stuck tip?

The interactive dashboard above is built as that Q3 stickiness lens. Toggle Δ scoreboard, Tip stickiness, Heal attribution, Agency tip, and Plan leverage. Filter tip metrics (Top-1 / Top-3 / HHI), slope meters, moved-only deltas, and plan-versus-role scatters. The punchline is deliberately multi-sided. On coverage, the narrative meter jumped +16 pp. On FTS donors, Top-1 and Top-3 stayed at 23.1% and 44.7% — Δ 0 pp versus the concentration print. On hosts, country Top-3 and LMIC shares stayed put. On heal attribution (constructed), roughly 77% of the +16 pp lift sits on Top-3-scale donor clusters. Coverage can heal on an oligopoly cash ladder without democratising who bears people costs.

The Q3 stickiness scoreboard

Read the table as a family of market shares under a moving narrative, not one slogan. Coverage Top-line tells you the GHO cash path healed. Donor Top-1 tells you which chequebook still dominates tracked humanitarian cash. Host Top-3 tells you how thin the country tip of people hosting remains. Averaging “humanitarian concentration improved because coverage rose” is a category error — 40.4% coverage is not 23% of FTS, and neither redistributes a 68% LMIC host stock.

Coverage healed; the tip did not

Toggle Tip stickiness. The dual-path chart is the post’s central hinge: amber GHO coverage climbs from 24.4% to 40.4% while dashed FTS Top-1 and Top-3 lines sit flat at 23.1% and 44.7%, and rose host Top-3 / LMIC lines do not move. That is level change without share change. Absolute funded dollars rose (+$5.87B); the tip geometry of who owns those dollars did not.

Open Vintage slope and flip the meter. Coverage shows the only steep climb from research → concentration print → Q3/Aug. Donor Top-1, donor Top-3, and host Top-3 are near-flat after the concentration lock. Pair this with our August donor unpack when you need the vintage who paid story rather than the stickiness cut. August answered whose inflows produced the +16 pp; this post answers whether those inflows changed the shape of the tip (they did not).

Two caveats travel with every stickiness claim. Tracked FTS is not the whole system — bilateral, private, and in-kind flows can sit outside the ladder you are ranking. And a flat share tip under rising absolute cash still concentrates power: the same three actors can write a larger cheque stack without losing oligopoly geometry.

Who paid the heal — still an oligopoly cash story

Toggle Heal attribution. The constructed waterfall decomposes the May→Aug path: US-scale donors ~+7.2 pp, EC + Japan ~+5.1 pp, other Top-10 ~+3.7 pp, residual FTS ~+0.8 pp, minus ask creep ~−0.8 pp, landing at 40.4%. The heal-share donut puts roughly 45% / 32% / 23% of the positive lift on those three clusters — about 77% on Top-3-scale money. That is editorial geometry, not an official FTS attribution filing, but it matches the same oligopoly tip the concentration print already named.

Flip the lens filter to Donors on the share ladder beside the waterfall. The United States ($2.83B, 23.1%), European Commission ($1.75B, 14.3%), and Japan ($0.89B, 7.3%) still clear the cumulative top-three. Top-10 still clears ~82% of ~$12.3B tracked. The concentration curve rises to ~45% by rank 3 and ~82% by rank 10 — leaving a long residual that did not suddenly democratise when coverage healed.

People tips stayed diffuse at country rank — thick at income rank

Host-country geometry did not get a Mid-Year Trends refresh in this window, so the Q3 concentration lens carries end-2025 stocks: Colombia (~2.8M, ~6.6%), Germany (~2.7M), Türkiye (~2.4M) for a Top-3 near 18.5% of a ~42.7M refugee / OPNIIP universe. Country-level HHI stays in the unconcentrated band. That is not equal burden — it is the claim that no single capital owns the people stock the way the US owns the cash tip.

Income-group geometry stays the thicker tip: upper-middle ~33%, high-income ~29%, with LMIC hosts still ~68% and LDCs ~26%. Income-group HHI (~2,711) sits in the high band because four coarse buckets replace dozens of countries. The narrative trap is unchanged from the 2026 concentration print: treat “hosts are diversified” (true at country rank) as “burden is shared with donors” (false once income and cash tips are read together). For the longer hosting-burden frame, see our global refugee hosting burden.

Appeal tip and plan leverage: large asks can still sit thin on cash

Toggle Plan leverage. Against the August GHO ask of $34.87B, Sudan / regional (~$4.2B) remains ~12% of requirements; Ukraine / regional and oPt / regional bring Top-3 to ~29%. The ask-share × coverage scatter (bubble size ∝ people in need) still shows Ukraine-class plans higher on coverage while Sudan- and Sahel-class plans combine large PIN footprints with thinner coverage. A healed headline coverage percentage can coexist with under-cash tips inside the largest need clusters.

Flip scatter to Host/donor roles. Colombia, Uganda, and Türkiye sit high on people hosted and near-zero on FTS donor share; the US and Japan sit the other way; Germany is one of the few dual roles. That role scatter is the people-side cousin of tip stickiness: healing the cash narrative does not move who hosts.

Agency tip: UNHCR early pledges thinned while GHO coverage rose

Toggle Agency tip. UNHCR’s 2026 needs budget ($8.505B) is about −20% versus the 2025 needs print, and early-pledge share sits near 18% — roughly −19 pp versus 2025 year-end funded (37%). About 11.6M people sit in an at-risk cuts framing against a ~136M planning figure. That is a second tip: agency cash can arrive later and thinner even while GHO coverage narratives look healthier and the FTS oligopoly tip stays locked.

Put agency scarcity beside the still-open GHO gap (~$20.8B after the heal). Coverage at 40.4% is progress relative to May’s 24.4%; it is not a fully funded system, and it is not evidence that donor or host concentration eased. Our Q3 update tracks the vintage deltas; this lens tracks whether those deltas changed the distribution.

Caveats: what this lens does not claim

• Do not average FTS cash shares, host people shares, GHO coverage %, and UNHCR early-pledge % into one “humanitarian concentration” indexthey answer different questions on different denominators.
• Heal attribution pp slices are constructed for geometry; they are not an official OCHA who-paid table. Treat them as editorial decomposition consistent with the disclosed tip, not as cite-ready micro-attribution.
• Host stocks and LMIC/LDC shares are carried from UNHCR Global Trends 2025 until Mid-Year Trends 2026. Tip stickiness on the people side partly reflects a missing stock refresh, not a proven intra-year freeze.
• Tracked FTS ≠ whole-of-system finance. Private philanthropy, remittances, in-kind military-adjacent flows, and unreported bilateral lines can sit off-ladder.
• HHI values are analytical on stated bucket shares (0–10,000). Income-group HHI looks “high” partly because the bucket count is four; country-host HHI looks “low” partly because the residual is large.

Bottom line for desks

Q3 did not democratise migration and humanitarian burden at the tip. GHO coverage healed +16 pp on a cash inflow that still clears through an FTS Top-1 of ~23% and Top-3 of ~45%. Host-country Top-3 stays near 19% while LMIC hosts still carry ~68% of refugees. Constructed heal attribution puts most of the coverage lift on the same Top-3-scale donor clusters. UNHCR early pledges thinned even as the GHO narrative meter improved. Read coverage as a funding-path meter; read Top-1 / Top-3 as the market-share meter — and do not confuse a healed path with a redistributed tip.

Related reading: 2026 concentration print, August donor unpack, Q3 vintage update, research map, and global refugee hosting burden.