Outside the M25: The regional growth story investors are missing

For years, the UK’s investment story has been closely tied to one place: London. That will surprise absolutely no one. The capital has the country’s deepest concentration of businesses, investors and financial institutions, and it remains by far the UK’s largest scaleup hub.

But new data from our UK Scaleup Report 2026 suggests something is on the move outside of the M25...

The capital was home to 23,255 scaleups in 2025, significantly more than any other English region. It was also the only English region to record growth during the year, with its scaleup population increasing by 1.73%. Within London, the City of London saw an even stronger increase of 5.20%, reaching 1,680 scaleups.

Yet the data shows pockets of significant growth in cities and regions that have traditionally attracted less attention from the investment community. Some are growing quickly, while others are building sizeable ecosystems of their own.

For investors, these are potentially important signals.

The regional picture

Winchester is perhaps the clearest example of this emerging trend. The city recorded a 7.08% increase in scaleups in 2025, the strongest growth among the locations examined in the report. More strikingly, its scaleup population has increased by 47.56% since 2017.

Cambridge is another standout. Although it’s not among the three locations with the highest number of scaleups in the East of England, it recorded 6.25% growth in 2025. Elsewhere, Liverpool and Stockport both recorded increases, while Manchester - despite remaining the North West's largest scaleup hub - saw a modest 0.75% decline.

None of this changes London's dominant position, but it does challenge the assumption that the UK's most interesting growth companies will only be found within the M25.

A broader investment map

The opportunity is not simply about finding businesses outside London for its own sake. Regional companies offer access to different talent pools, sector strengths and local networks, while potentially operating in very different cost environments from businesses based in the capital.

More importantly, the data suggests that some of these ecosystems are already gathering momentum.

Winchester, Cambridge, Liverpool and Stockport are among the locations showing encouraging growth, alongside established centres such as Manchester. It points to a clear sign that other cities are beginning to step out of London's shadow.

For institutional investors, that raises a straightforward question: how much potential is being missed by looking for growth in the same places, through the same networks, year after year?

The context behind the numbers

It’s worth being careful about what the data does (and does not) tell investors.

A growing number of scaleups does not automatically make a city an attractive investment market. But they are a useful starting point.

Businesses outside of London are successfully transitioning beyond the earliest stages of development. It suggests an underlying pool of companies building teams, expanding operations, and moving toward greater scale.

That is precisely the pipeline that growth capital needs, and with the UK's overall scaleup population having fallen for three consecutive years,  pockets of regional growth become even more interesting.

Regional growth is not new, but the pattern is

Manchester's tech scene and Cambridge's science pedigree are no surprise. Individual cities building strong ecosystems is a decades-old story.

What's different now is the breadth: growth is appearing at the same time across cities with very different profiles, from established players to newer entrants, rather than concentrating in one or two familiar names.

That breadth matters more than any single city's number. A single fast-growing outlier is easy to dismiss as noise.

Multiple cities moving in the same direction at once looks more like a structural shift in where UK businesses are able to scale, and structural shifts are exactly what early-moving investors want to catch before they become consensus.

That kind of broad-based growth also carries an economic weight that a single hotspot wouldn't. Spread scaleup growth across more cities, and the jobs, investment and entrepreneurial activity it generates spread with it, rather than concentrating in one place.

It's a pattern that matters to a sector with a reported £2.19 trillion in economic contribution last year, a figure that becomes more durable, not less, when the growth behind it isn't resting on one city alone.

The opportunity outside the capital

London is likely to remain the UK's dominant scaleup and investment hub, but dominance does not mean exclusivity.

The data is beginning to show a more complicated picture: established regional centres continue to develop, smaller cities are recording impressive growth, and the geography of UK entrepreneurship is becoming harder to reduce to a single postcode.

That could be an exciting opportunity for investors: the businesses worth backing are not always found where everyone else is already looking.

The M25 - and what's within it - is still important. But what lies beyond it is nothing to scoff at, either.

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