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This is the second edition of the Financial Times and Statista ranking of Europe’s Long-term Growth Champions: businesses that have sustained their sales growth over a decade.

The list comprises 300 companies in Europe with the highest disclosed compound annual growth rate over the 10 years to 2024, a period that included the widespread recession sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine and the sudden steep rise in inflation that followed.

The top-ranked company in this year’s list, with a compound annual growth rate of 87.44 per cent, is Finland’s Virta Global, which provides smart electric-vehicle charging services. Online services also underpin the success story of second-ranked Hostinger, headquartered in Lithuania, which provides online hosting and website building tools to 4mn customers in more than 150 countries. Overall, companies offering IT and software services make up 18 per cent of this year’s ranking with ecommerce adding a further 6 per cent.

However, companies in more traditional lines of business are also well represented. Companies in construction and engineering make up the second-largest category at around 8 per cent of the 300 companies in this year’s ranking and other traditional sectors such as manufacturing and energy and utilities account for around 5 per cent and 4 per cent respectively. There are 31 sector categories in total.

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The country with the most companies on the list is Italy with 65. UK is ranked second with 52, then Germany (47), France (46) and Spain (29). Altogether 26 European countries are represented in the listing.

The list, which was compiled by research company Statista, is not necessarily a reflection of the size of countries’ economies but, rather, their ability to innovate and the willingness of their high-growth companies to be candid with financial information.

Readers can use the arrow buttons at the top of the columns in the table (below) to sort by country, sector or revenue, to analyse the data in more detail. 

* A single asterisk in the listing indicates companies that had less than 12 months revenue in the 2014 fiscal year, but still passed €100,000

** A double asterisk in the listing indicates that the company has been acquired by another company after the relevant time period

As many fast-growing companies tend to be privately held and do not publicly disclose detailed financial data, a ranking such as this can never claim to be complete. But the rigorous screening process (see methodology below) — which also requires senior executives to sign off on the figures submitted by their companies — means the ranking can offer readers a meaningful insight into the health of these companies.

Methodology

Europe’s Long-term Growth Champions 2026 is a list of the top 300 companies in Europe that have achieved the highest percentage growth in revenues between 2014 and 2024.

APPLICATION PHASE

The project was advertised online and in print, allowing all eligible companies to register via the websites created by Statista and the Financial Times. In addition, through research in company databases and other public sources Statista identified thousands of companies in Europe as potential candidates for the ranking. These companies were invited to participate in the competition by email.

The application phase ran from March 2025 to June 2025. The submitted revenue figures had to be certified by the CFO, CEO or a member of the executive committee of the company.

CRITERIA FOR INCLUSION

To be included in the list of Europe’s Long-term Growth Champions, a company had to meet the following criteria:

Revenue of at least €100,000 generated in 2014*

Revenue of at least €10mn generated in 2024*

The company is independent (not a subsidiary or branch office of any kind)

The company is headquartered in Europe**

The revenue growth between 2014 and 2024 was primarily organic (ie internally stimulated)

*Annual average currency value of 2014 and 2024 and based on revenue generated in the fiscal year ended in 2014 and 2024 respectively

**Companies from the following countries were eligible to participate: Austria, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom.

RESEARCH PHASE

Following the application phase, Statista examined the officially stated revenue data of public companies. In the next step certain high-profile companies that met the criteria were added to the list.

CALCULATION OF CAGR

The calculation of companies’ compound annual growth rates is based on the revenue figures submitted in their respective national currency. For better comparability, in the ranking the revenue figures were converted into euros. The annual exchange rates of 2014 and 2024 provided by Exchange Rates UK for each currency-pair were used for this.

The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) was calculated as: ((revenue 2024/revenue2014)^(1/10)) – 1 = CAGR

EVALUATION AND QUALITY ASSURANCE

Companies are ranked according to three decimal places of the calculated CAGR. All data reported by the companies was processed and checked by Statista. Missing data entries (employee numbers, address data, etc) were researched in detail. Companies that did not fulfil the criteria for inclusion in the ranking were deleted.

The minimum average growth rate required to be included in the ranking was 8.19 per cent.

DISCLAIMER

The Europe’s Long-Term Growth Champions 2026 ranking was created through a complex procedure. Although the search was very extensive, the ranking does not claim to be complete, as some companies did not want to make their figures public or did not participate for other reasons.