Getty Images announced the cancellation of its $3.7 billion merger with Shutterstock after demands from the British regulator were deemed unacceptable.
The deal, which was announced in January 2025 with the aim of creating a giant in the licensed visual content space, encountered obstacles from the British regulator, despite the fact that it had received unconditional approval from the American competition authorities.
The US Department of Justice had granted unconditional antitrust clearance in February, paving the way for the deal to go through. However, in May 2026, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) stepped in with binding conditions: it required Shutterstock to sell its global editorial division, including paparazzi agencies Backgrid and Splash. The CMA found that keeping Shutterstock's editorial division within the merged entity would reduce choice for UK media and lead to higher prices, as Shutterstock is one of Getty's "few substantial" competitors in the UK market.
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Getty Images filed a statement with the SEC on Tuesday, explicitly stating that it is “not obligated to accept” the conditions set by the CMA. The company’s board of directors voted unanimously to terminate the agreement on July 6, 2026, unless there is a material change before July 7.
Why the Getty-Shutterstock merger was critical for the industry
The merger wasn’t just a corporate transaction — it was a strategic move for survival in an industry facing radical reshaping. Both Getty Images and Shutterstock face growing pressure from AI image generators like DALL-E, Midjourney , and Stable Diffusion, which offer cheap and instant on-demand visual content. The deal’s failure leaves both companies facing AI.
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The regulatory precedent and impact of the Getty-Shutterstock merger
The CMA’s intervention is not unprecedented. The British regulator has previously overturned major deals approved by US authorities . A case in point is Meta , which was forced to sell Giphy in 2021 due to competition concerns — and which Shutterstock itself eventually bought in 2023. This track record shows that the CMA is willing to impose strict conditions even on deals that have been greenlit in other jurisdictions.
The collapse of the Getty-Shutterstock merger sends a clear message to the industry: UK regulators will continue to scrutinise mergers that could consolidate control over editorial content, particularly when it comes to supplying media with stock photography. Analysts say the demand to divest the editorial division was “unacceptable” to Getty from the start, as it would significantly weaken its position in the news content supply chain.
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The future for both companies remains uncertain. Without the scale that a merger would bring, both Getty Images and Shutterstock are forced to find new ways to compete in an industry where the cost and ease of AI-powered are the dominant factors. According to The Verge, this decision effectively leaves the Getty-Shutterstock dead, with both companies facing a much more difficult path ahead.
