Barcelona has remained the fifth hub for startups in Europe in the ranking compiled since 2011 by EU-Startups, a digital medium focused on the European entrepreneurial ecosystem. The Catalan capital is the first Spanish city to appear in the ranking and is only accompanied by Madrid, which has worsened compared to the last edition, going from sixth to seventh position. Valencia has been left at the gates and almost placed among the top 30 European hubs.
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London, Berlin, Paris, and Amsterdam are the cities ahead of Barcelona, at a considerable distance. The former has led the ranking since its first edition. EU-Startups points out that Brexit and the end of the transition period after its departure from the European Union (EU) will have negative effects on its startup ecosystem, but assures that it will not drop in position in the next four years. Likewise, Paris could surpass Berlin by 2022, considering that a very small distance separates them, while Amsterdam is expected to maintain its fourth place, as it is far from Paris and Barcelona is also far from the Dutch city.
Despite Barcelona not having lost any position regarding the last EU-Startups ranking in 2018, the digital medium has underlined that it is not far from the three cities that follow it ---Munich, Madrid, and Stockholm--- and has warned that it could drop in level in the next two years. Precisely, Munich has been one of the surprises of this year's classification. The German city has been climbing positions for four years: it was the twelfth hub in 2016 and has reached the sixth position this 2020, taking Madrid's place.
Regarding the capital of Madrid, EU-Startups has remarked that, after years occupying the sixth position, it has fallen one position due to the dimension and number of financing rounds it has made in 2020, which have been surpassed by Munich's capacity to attract resources.
The other two surprises of the 2020 ranking have been Tallinn and Hamburg, which have risen to the twelfth and fifteenth position, respectively. The capital of Estonia has snuck into the top 15 cities thanks to the innovative initiatives its government is carrying out, such as e-Residency, which allows digital entrepreneurs from outside the country to create a digital company and manage it from wherever they want in a completely virtual way. On the other hand, Hamburg has also entered the ranking. The second German city is home to the OMR Festival, an event for startups and digital marketing that gathered more than 50,000 attendees each year before the pandemic.
Ranking elaboration
To elaborate the ranking, EU-Startups takes into account three variables: the 150 most visited cities on its website; the number of startups that have been created in each of the cities in the last three years, and the financing that has been registered in each of them in the last twelve months. Then, each variable is given a specific weight ---the first variable has the least--- and the classification is obtained.
EU-Startups remarks that the ranking "does not want to be the final or indisputable judgment" on the real importance of each of the capitals for startups in Europe. "It is more like a mirror of the digital presence and visibility of these cities in the English-speaking universe of startups," it explains, in addition to representing a good indicator of the latest changes and trends registered in the hubs.