Call for entries: Europe’s Leading Start-Up Hubs 2025

Earlier this year, the FT — with its research partner Statista and its colleagues at start-up media brand Sifted — published a first-ever ranking of the best support schemes for new businesses across Europe.

It was based principally on assessments of incubator and accelerator schemes by alumni who had participated in them, as well as the recommendations of investors and entrepreneurs, and the financial performance of the most successful start-ups they backed.

Interactive ranking: Europe’s Leading Start-up Hubs 2024

Click here to view the top business incubator and accelerator programmes, based on alumni feedback, and customise the tables according to your priorities

Our inaugural ranking featured 125 hubs in 21 countries. It was accompanied by an FT special report profiling schemes in Munich, Barcelona, Lille, Cambridge and beyond — showing how Europe is now competing with the US in backing a new generation of innovators.

But, in this fast-moving area, up-to-date information is essential, so we are now starting work on a second edition of the start-up hubs ranking — and we need your help.

If you are a representative of a start-up incubator or accelerator programme, we would like you to register your programme’s details and tell us how it has performed. You can do so by clicking this link to our online registration form, which takes only a few minutes to complete. The registration period will run until August 2.

You will then receive a specific survey link that you can share with your alumni, allowing them to evaluate your programme(s). Expect to be contacted about the alumni survey soon after registration.

Or, if you are an investor, adviser, venture capitalist or business angel, we would like you to tell us about the incubators and accelerators you know of, and to what extent you would recommend them. You can do so by clicking this link to our short online survey. Your answers will not be attributed to you.

We will publish our second annual ranking of the top European Start-Up Hubs in February 2025, as part of a special report with the FT newspaper and online at ft.com and at sifted.eu.

Among the factors that we will incorporate into the ranking process will be:

• Mentoring & training provided

• Infrastructure, eg offices, labs, software

• Legal assistance

• Business development advice

• Networking opportunities

• Funding opportunities

• Cost/fees/equity taken

To learn more about this research project, please visit Statista’s information page at: https://www.statista.com/page/start-up-hubs.

Or, if you would like to contact us to ask specific questions, please send an email to startup-hubs-eu@statista.com and our colleagues at Statista will respond.

Sifted is the critical friend of Europe’s start-up community. Backed by the Financial Times, we aim to be the gate-openers, connectors and trusted intermediaries to make the ecosystem a more fair and successful place.

Combining proprietary data with quality reporting and analysis, we offer insights for founders, investors and start-up operators you won’t find anywhere else. We know start-up Europe because we are start-up Europe.

Click here to learn more and become a member today.