The Barcelona of 2,558 startups

When Barcelona began to talk about startups, the Mobile World Congress had recently settled in the city, Instagram had just been born, and 22@ existed but was still, to a large extent, a bet on the future. Today, the Catalan capital concentrates between 2,403 and 2,558 startups, depending on the source consulted, and has consolidated itself as one of Europe's main innovation hubs.

According to the latest StartupBlink report, Barcelona hosts 2,558 startups and concentrates 41% of all emerging companies in Spain. ACCIÓ slightly lowers the figure to 2,403, but agrees on the trend: the ecosystem grew by 5% during the last year and generated close to 3 billion euros in aggregated turnover. What's more, Catalan startups already employ more than 30,500 people, a figure equivalent to the entire population of a city like Sitges.

But what exactly is a startup? The term was born in the United States during the second half of the 20th century to refer to young, newly created companies with high growth potential, usually linked to technology and innovation. In Spain, it began to be used, almost marginally, between 2000 and 2010. But it wasn't until 2011-2012 that the word began to appear regularly in the media and in economic debate, coinciding with the emergence of digital entrepreneurship after the financial crisis.

Currently, however, determining exactly what a startup is—and especially when it stops being one—is almost as complex as deciding when someone stops being young. There are entities that consider a company stops being a startup at 5 years, at 7 years, and others up to 10 years.

However, this concept imported from Silicon Valley has ended up transforming a significant part of the Catalan business fabric and achieving international leadership. Barcelona holds a leading position on an international scale. It ranks 32nd worldwide (moving up 1 spot thanks to a 5.5% growth in its score) and is the fifth startup hub in the European Union, only behind capitals such as Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, and Amsterdam.

"Determining exactly what a startup is—and especially when it stops being one—is almost as complex as deciding when someone stops being young"

And among these milestones, the speed of transformation stands out. In less than a decade, the number of startups has more than doubled (+121%) and almost half of current emerging companies have been born during the last five years. Few business transformations in Barcelona have advanced at this pace.

An attractive ecosystem that generates a snowball effect and places Barcelona as the sixth European city preferred by entrepreneurs to found a startup, only behind London, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, and Munich. The data comes from the Startup Heatmap Europe 2025 ranking, a report in which Barcelona has lost some positions —it previously occupied third place— and in which Madrid has been closing the gap, moving from eleventh to eighth position.

And what is the youngest face of the Catalan business fabric like? Deeply technological and international. According to ACCIÓ, 61% of startups export products and services, 57.5% work with technologies linked to industry 4.0 —such as artificial intelligence, big data, or cloud computing— and 374 are classified as deep tech, meaning they develop solutions based on science and advanced technology.

In this portrait, however, some challenges also emerge: the Barcelona entrepreneurial ecosystem continues to be predominantly male, as in the rest of Europe. According to South Summit data for Spain as a whole, women represent only 17.5% of the total number of entrepreneurs, a proportion that, moreover, has decreased compared to the 20% registered in previous years.

The four Barcelona unicorns

As a hub of innovation and entrepreneurship, Barcelona is also the birthplace of several unicorns. This term is used to define unlisted startups with a valuation exceeding 1 billion dollars.

Barcelona has three: Factorial, Perk and Letgo. In some rankings, other companies such as Glovo or Adevinta also appear, but they should be excluded from the classification. In the case of Adevinta, because it is a consolidated multinational and not a startup in the strict sense of the term. In the case of Glovo, because it ceased to be an independent company after its acquisition by the German multinational Delivery Hero. Wallbox also appeared in this ranking until recently, but the lack of liquidity and its fall on the stock market have made it lose the title of Catalan unicorn.

On the other hand, at the tail of the group and striving to one day reach the unicorn podium, there are several companies that aspire to exceed the barrier of 1,000 million dollars in valuation. Among them, Typeform, Wallapop, SeQura or Heura stand out.

The network that makes it possible

Behind this growth there are multiple factors: the pulling effect of the Mobile World Congress, 4YFN and many other congresses, the development of 22@, the network of research centers, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Eurecat or Leitat, the ability to attract international talent, the city's high air connectivity, the quality of life highlighted by numerous international rankings and the role of organizations such as Barcelona Activa, Tech Barcelona, ACCIÓ and many startup networks and accelerators that support entrepreneurship and internationalization.

A large network of factors, institutions, companies and decisions accumulated over decades that explain why Barcelona has become one of the European capitals of startups and that would, in truth, give rise to many more Mondays with Barcelona in figures. And so it will be.