The Financial Times, Statista and Sifted are pleased to present the second edition of Europe’s Leading Start-up Hubs.
The 2025 list comprises 150 hubs evaluated by alumni and external experts such as investors, entrepreneurs and academics.
Germany’s UnternehmerTUM leads the ranking for the second year running. The non-profit organisation offers programmes that support start-ups in the essentials of building a company. Hot on its heels is Paris-based Station F, a start-up campus that has nurtured 7,000 businesses including two unicorns.
The country with the most hubs in the ranking is the UK with 29, most based in London. Germany has 19 while Spain and Portugal combined have 24 hubs, with two of those incubators in the top 20 overall ranking.
The full Europe’s Leading Start-up Hubs 2025 special report will be published in March.
Methodology
Europe’s Leading Start-up Hubs 2025, in its second edition, is a ranking of the top centres offering incubator and/or accelerator programmes to people who want to build or grow a company.
Requiring at least one physical location within Europe, these centres are called start-up hubs. In total, 150 such hubs were recognised in this ranking.
The Financial Times co-operated with the international data and research company Statista as well as Sifted, the FT-backed leading media brand for the European start-up community.
A two-phase application and evaluation process was conducted to identify the leading hubs. Several elements were considered, with the main criterion being the assessment by alumni who participated in at least one programme run by the respective hub.
Also included were the recommendations of external experts, such as investors (business angels, representatives of venture capital firms), entrepreneurs and academics. Additionally, the most successful start-ups coming out of a hub were examined.
Phase 1: Start-up Hubs application phase
Roughly 3000 start-up hubs were identified as potential candidates. They were actively invited to register, via announcement articles published on FT.com and Sifted.eu, followed by emails and calls from a team of researchers provided by Statista as well as via newsletters and ads sent out by Sifted.
The online registration phase ran from June 3 to September 14, 2024.
A start-up hub had to meet the following criteria to be eligible for consideration:
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Physical location in Europe*
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Offer at least one incubation or acceleration programme
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Have been in operation since at least 2020
Phase 2: The alumni evaluation phase
Once a hub registered and provided all the required information on its programmes, offers and track-record, alumni which participated in such programmes between 2018-2023 were asked to evaluate their experience, both in general and by certain aspects.
The alumni were asked to evaluate their programme on the following criteria:
Alumni were also asked to what extent they would recommend their hub on a scale of 0-10. Furthermore, questions were asked about the application process, cost (fees or equity taken) and support after the programme.
Phase 3: Survey and data evaluation & analysis
For each criteria evaluated by the alumni through multiple questions and their overall recommendation, an average score was calculated (=Alumni Score). For hubs participating for the second year, past alumni evaluations were also considered after performing eligibility and duplication checks.
In parallel to the registration and alumni evaluation period, start-up investors and seasoned entrepreneurs were asked to evaluate start-up hubs they know on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being the best score (=Expert Score).
Information requested from hubs about the top five start-ups which participated in one of their programmes was collected and evaluated (=Track Record Score).
The Overall Score for a start-up hub was calculated as a weighted average of the Alumni Score (overall recommendation and evaluation of sub-dimensions), the Expert Score and the Track Record Score.
Quality assurance
All survey data (Start-Up Hubs registrations, Alumni evaluations and Experts’ recommendations) has been processed and checked by Statista. In order to retrieve missing information, Statista contacted some of the start-up hubs.
Disclaimer
The selection of the start-up hubs and the definition of the evaluation criteria were carried out according to the independent journalistic criteria of The Financial Times and Statista. The ranking was created through a complex procedure. Although the research was extensive, the ranking does not claim to be complete, as some start-up hubs did not want to participate or did not receive a sufficient amount of alumni evaluations to be included.
Only start-up hubs that are eligible according to the criteria in this methodology feature in the ranking. A position in the ranking is a positive recognition based on the information provided through the survey and the data collected.
The survey and the analysis phase ran from June to October 2024. Data that was published after that time, and events since November 5 2024, were not included. As such, the results of this ranking should not be used as the sole source of information for future deliberations. The information in the ranking should be considered in conjunction with other available sources.
The quality of start-up hubs that are not included in the ranking is not disputed.
*The start-up hub must be based in one of the following countries: Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom.