Barcelona, third best European city to create a startup

The Startup Heatmap Europe 2021 study, which monitors and maps ecosystems for startups in Europe, highlights that the city of Barcelona ranks third in the list of most attractive cities to establish a start-up today, behind London and Berlin.

Barcelona holds this position for the fourth consecutive year. In 2020 more than 18% of professionals who created a startup chose Barcelona as their location, which has a huge impact on the fact that the city has a highly international community of entrepreneurs. With more than 65% of foreigners working in startups, the city is the 4th most international European hub.

The Catalan capital is also the second city among the major technology hubs that bring together more than 500 million euros of investment, which has more technologically capable entrepreneurs: more than 32% of the founders of startups in Barcelona are experts in programming and coding.

In this sense, according to the users registered in the professional platform of programmers stackoverflow.com, which serves more than 100 million people per month, Barcelona is the 7th largest web developer hub in Europe.

The city has a strong digital community with 77,000 professionals, of which 26% are women, according to Barcelona Digital Talent, and attracts largely foreign talent, as 31% of digital professionals operating in the city are from outside Barcelona.

The study also highlights that Barcelona maintains the attraction as one of the most dynamic startup ecosystems globally and highlights that 7 international “unicorns” (with a business value above one trillion dollars) have their headquarters in the city. Some examples are N26, Glovo and Letgo. Barcelona-Catalonia are home to more than 1,500 startups, according to the Barcelona & Catalonia Startup Hub directory.

Source: Startup Heatmap Europe and Barcelona City Council