The UK cycling market finally appears to be returning to growth and stabilising after years of post-Covid turbulence, the latest annual report by the Bicycle Association has found.
The report, published on Thursday by the national trade association for the UK cycle industry, collected retail sales data covering around 70 per cent of the cycling market in the UK, exploring performance across a range of sectors, including e-bikes, parts and accessories, and services, as well as wider participation trends and economic factors shaping the industry.
And after a few doom-laded reports in recent years, the BA’s 2025 analysis is rather more positive, the trade association finding that the UK cycling market returned to growth last year, with the total market value increasing by five per cent compared to 2024.
That marks the first annual growth recorded by the cycling industry in the UK since the lockdown-related boom of 2020.
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Sales volumes also increased across what the BA deems the sector’s four “core categories”, with sales of mechanical bikes rising by six per cent, e-bikes up by two per cent, parts, accessories, and components seeing a small rise of one per cent, and services surging by eight per cent.
According to the report, growth was driven in part by a “revival in mainstream recreational and family cycling”, ushered in by the favourable spring and summer weather we experienced in 2025.
Meanwhile, despite the modest growth in sale volume of e-bikes, the category’s value grew by 10 per cent in 2025, driven by higher-value models such as e-mountain bikes.
Overall, the total UK cycling market is estimated to have reached just under £1.9 billion in 2025, returning close to levels last seen in 2022.
The BA also noted that while overall sales remain below the peak levels seen at the start of the 2020s, areas of the market are showing “signs of resilience” with green shoots emerging.
This positive outlook is a far cry from last year’s report, which found that bicycle sales had fallen in the UK to 1.45 million, the lowest figure for 50 years, as the industry struggled to stabilise in the wake of the post-Covid downturn.
“The past few years have been a period of significant adjustment for the cycling industry following the extraordinary demand seen during the pandemic,” Bronwyn Benstead, the Bicycle Association’s commercial and insights manager, said in a statement following the publication of the BA’s 2025 report this week.
“While the market remains challenging, the BA’s data, and future forecasts, suggest that the sector may be approaching a turning point, with early signs of stabilisation and opportunities for growth as businesses adapt to changing consumer demand.
“Encouragingly, we’re also seeing a recovery in children’s cycling, which is a positive signal for the long-term health of the industry.”
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Speaking to the road.cc Podcast in January, industry stalwart Rory Hitchens was also confident that the UK’s cycling market had finally turned the corner after years of bad news reports.
“Overall, I would say that the health check on the situation at the moment is good. It can always get better,” he said.
“But everyone seems to genuinely be going like, we’re okay now. We can breathe. And actually, we’ve made some plans and we’ve put those plans in action and it’s working.
“And if all that is good, we as consumers benefit, don’t we? Because we start to see new products, exciting things. We get the support and the backup we want from a brand. If you’ve bought a bike and the brand no longer exists, where are you with support, backup, warranty? All those question marks go out of the way if you know things are stable.
“The playing field has levelled off a bit. There are fewer people on that playing field now, but the ones that are, they know what they’re doing – in my opinion!”
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He continued: “If we’ve got ’25 behind us and we’re alive in ’26, then we’ve gone through it,” Rory says. “And I feel like there’s an optimism now that people are like, ‘phew, I either dodged a few bullets or actually I know what I’m doing’.
“And you know what, it was time to learn a few lessons. Maybe the industry is actually getting to a place where it always needed to be. It needed a good shake-up, it really did. And it still does, to be honest.
“It still doesn’t have good systems in place, a brand still doesn’t know where a dealer sold their bike and who they sold it to, they can’t support the customer and the dealer. With simple stuff like that, our industry is still a bit backward.
“But we are definitely moving forward into a better space. We’re back on track, but we’re wiser.”