This year rankings have widened out the criteria of European startup hubs considered:
- Analysed 3,000 hubs for 2025, up from 2,000 candidates last year.
- Shortlisted the top 150 leaders in innovation support, up from 125 in 2024.
- Assessed 38 European countries, up from 19 European nations in 2024.
Each entry was assessed on three main criteria: feedback from alumni who had been
through at least one programme; recommendations from external experts such as investors, entrepreneurs and academics and analysis of the most successful startups
that launched from each hub.
Since launching in 2013, The Enterprise Hub has supported more than 500 researchers, recent graduates and SME leaders to start up and scale up businesses that can give practical application to their inventions. Our Hub Members have raised over £3 billion in additional funding as well as creating nearly 3,000 jobs.
Commenting on the number three ranking in the UK and 14th in Europe, announced today, Paul Taylor CBE FREng, Chair of the Academy’s Enterprise Committee, says: “Given the wider scope of entries and stronger competition for a top ranking this year, I’m even more delighted to see we have climbed from number five to number three position in the UK. That’s quite an achievement and it reflects the dedication and focus of our Enterprise Hub teams, which have grown from our original London hub and are now across the UK. We have a thriving network with a hub in Belfast, Swansea, Glasgow and Newcastle is opening next week.”
“Our work supporting talented entrepreneurs and business leaders has helped them to transform breakthrough engineering innovations into disruptive spinouts, startups and scaleups that seek to solve the pressing problems of our time. We hope this ranking helps us to attract even more engineers from all backgrounds to apply for our schemes and get the support they need to make their innovation into a credible startup company.”
UK companies topped the list of Europe’s leading Start-Up Hubs 2025, with 29 incubators, 19 are from Germany and Spain and Portugal have 24 combined.
