ESNA Startup Ecosystem Outlook 2026

The first intelligence report produced through the ESNA Data Platform and also the first report in a broader intelligence series. The objective of the Outlook is to provide an independent, comparative and evidence-based assessment of startup ecosystem performance across Europe and other leading global regions. Beyond VC funding activity, the report explores dimensions such as startup creation, revenues, talent, scaling dynamics and ecosystem competitiveness.

One finding that may be particularly relevant for the venture capital community is that Europe appears to perform comparatively better in startup revenue generation than in valuation creation. In 2025, EU ecosystem companies generated an estimated EUR 141 billion in revenue and reached a combined valuation of approximately EUR 1 trillion. More tellingly, average revenue among EU centaurs and unicorns was higher than among their US counterparts, even as the EU had only around one quarter as many centaurs and one seventh as many unicorns as the US. Between 2015 and 2025, scaled companies represented an average of just 1.1% of the EU ecosystem, compared with 3.9% in the US. This suggests that the challenge may be less about the ability of European companies to generate economic activity once they scale and more about enabling a larger number of promising firms to reach scale and capture value globally.