24 EU|BIC Community Members among Europe’s Leading Start-up Hubs in 2026 for Financial Times

For over 40 years, the EU|BIC label has identified organisations that deliver structured business support, measure their impact against international benchmarks, and build innovation infrastructure that serves their region beyond a single funding cycle.

This is the third consecutive year (2024, 2025) that EU|BIC community members have appeared in the Financial Times ranking. In 2024, they numbered 14. In 2025, 23. In 2026, 24 — and growing.

24 EU|BIC members are among the Financial Times Europe’s Leading Start-up Hubs 2026. They represent more than 10% of the total ranking, drawn from 11 countries — from Montpellier to Madeira, from Sežana to Madrid.

The Financial Times ranking, developed in cooperation with Statista and Sifted, evaluates hubs based on:

• Alumni assessments (mentoring, training, infrastructure, funding access)
• Expert recommendations (investors, entrepreneurs, academics)
• Track record of successful start-ups
• Overall recommendation scores

That methodology maps directly onto the EU|BIC Certification Framework, which assesses organisations on support services, ecosystem development, startup performance and access to finance. The FT evaluated hubs against criteria that the EU|BIC community has been applying internally — and being audited against — for four decades. The result: 24 certified members met the standard independently.

The 24 Recognised EU|BIC Community Members:

1. Bic Montpellier
2. Bic Euronova
3. Fundecyt – PCTEX
4. JIC
5. Impact Hub Ljubljana
6. Laval Mayenne Technopole
7. CEEI Valencia
8. Startup Leiria
9. INAM – Innovation Network for Advanced Materials
10. CEEI Castellón
11. The Place by CCI
12. Inkubator Savinjske Regije
13. Furthr
14. Lipo.ink
15. CEIN
16. La Nave – Innovation Centre Madrid City Council
17. Central Bohemian Innovation Center
18. Inkubator Sežana
19. University of Warwick Science Park
20. Descartes Développement et Innovation
21. Startup Madeira
22. Fundación madri+d
23. Sunrise Tech Park
24. Technopole de l’Aube en Champagne

Impact: Measured, Proven, Regional

These 24 organisations operate in different economies, serve different sectors, and work at different scales. What they share is a quality system: certified EU|BICs are assessed on their ability to deliver structured business support, build functioning ecosystems, improve startup performance, and connect companies to capital.

The numbers across the EU|BIC community tell that story:

• 29,000+ companies supported annually
• 84.5% three-year survival rate (the EU average is 58%)
• €881M+ in capital funding facilitated
• 340,000+ jobs created since 2004

These are not EU|BIC promotional claims. They are audited through the certification framework and reported in the annual EU|BIC Impact Report.

The 24 members in this year’s FT ranking did not appear because they are part of a network. They appeared because an independent evaluation measured what they do — and found that it works.

Congratulations to all 24, and to the EU|BIC community members across Europe who deliver this standard of work every year, whether or not a ranking captures it.