Company formations in Switzerland
Every new entry in the Swiss commercial register that the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (SHAB) has published since 2019, by month, canton, legal form and sector. Complete through 31 Oct 2026.
54,088 companies were founded in Switzerland in 2025 and entered in the commercial register, +4.9% on 2024. That is the highest yearly count in the series, which starts in 2019. 22,458 of them were GmbH (41.5%), 18,018 sole proprietorships (33.3%) and 10,560 AG (19.5%).
That makes about 148 new companies a day, and December 2025 was the busiest month, with 5,275. Zürich registered the most: 9,909, or 18.3% of the Swiss total.
From January to October 2026, the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (SHAB) published 45,071 new entries, +1.5% on the same months of 2025.
Company formations in Switzerland per year since 2019
Link to this table| Year | New companies | vs previous year |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 43,165 | — |
| 2020 | 45,302 | +5.0% |
| 2021 | 48,978 | +8.1% |
| 2022 | 48,536 | −0.9% |
| 2023 | 50,272 | +3.6% |
| 2024 | 51,575 | +2.6% |
| 2025 | 54,088 | +4.9% |
| January to October 2025 | 44,420 | — |
| January to October 2026 | 45,071 | +1.5% |
A new company is a new entry in the commercial register, as published in the SHAB: every legal form counts, sole proprietorships included. The last two rows compare the same months of two years.
Company formations per month, 2019 to 2026
Link to this table| Month | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 3,632 | 3,579 | 3,616 | 3,704 | 4,021 | 4,160 | 4,130 | 4,276 |
| February | 3,724 | 3,827 | 4,293 | 4,095 | 4,323 | 4,700 | 4,681 | 4,809 |
| March | 3,833 | 3,615 | 4,891 | 4,527 | 4,936 | 4,264 | 4,774 | 5,135 |
| April | 3,523 | 2,605 | 4,214 | 3,838 | 3,624 | 4,471 | 4,432 | 4,441 |
| May | 3,750 | 3,218 | 3,775 | 4,188 | 4,174 | 4,340 | 4,452 | 3,892 |
| June | 3,514 | 4,348 | 4,785 | 4,369 | 4,808 | 4,499 | 4,592 | 5,192 |
| July | 3,972 | 4,396 | 4,272 | 4,076 | 4,132 | 4,396 | 4,848 | 4,668 |
| August | 2,735 | 3,216 | 3,147 | 3,319 | 3,598 | 3,465 | 3,747 | 3,776 |
| September | 3,083 | 3,692 | 3,534 | 3,877 | 3,719 | 3,840 | 4,096 | 4,337 |
| October | 3,618 | 3,839 | 3,575 | 3,739 | 4,097 | 4,321 | 4,668 | 4,545 |
| November | 3,487 | 4,034 | 4,066 | 4,053 | 4,288 | 4,255 | 4,393 | — |
| December | 4,294 | 4,933 | 4,810 | 4,751 | 4,552 | 4,864 | 5,275 | — |
Counted in the month the SHAB published the new entry. A dash marks a month the data does not cover yet.
Company formations by legal form per year: GmbH, AG, sole proprietorships
Link to this table| Legal form | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | January to October 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Limited liability company (Sàrl/GmbH) | 17,258 | 18,291 | 19,533 | 19,875 | 20,415 | 20,733 | 22,458 | 19,154 |
| Sole proprietorship | 14,284 | 14,858 | 15,925 | 15,965 | 17,469 | 18,122 | 18,018 | 14,882 |
| Corporation (SA/AG) | 8,990 | 9,323 | 10,551 | 9,929 | 9,403 | 9,623 | 10,560 | 8,533 |
| General partnership | 1,300 | 1,383 | 1,441 | 1,308 | 1,533 | 1,521 | 1,374 | 1,143 |
| Association | 662 | 590 | 718 | 772 | 836 | 1,080 | 1,141 | 938 |
| Foundation | 453 | 638 | 588 | 432 | 367 | 344 | 359 | 270 |
| Cooperative | 117 | 123 | 136 | 107 | 96 | 89 | 93 | 73 |
| Other legal forms | 101 | 96 | 86 | 148 | 153 | 63 | 85 | 78 |
The legal form the new-entry notice states, so the form at entry: a GmbH that later became an AG counts as a GmbH.
Company formations by canton in 2025
Link to this table| Canton | 2025 | vs 2024 | Share of Swiss total | January to October 2026 | vs same months 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zürich | 9,909 | +5.9% | 18.3% | 8,402 | +1.2% |
| Vaud | 5,161 | +0.5% | 9.5% | 4,180 | −1.5% |
| Geneva | 4,470 | +8.5% | 8.3% | 3,520 | −4.1% |
| Bern | 4,321 | +0.8% | 8.0% | 3,589 | +1.1% |
| Zug | 3,588 | +19.3% | 6.6% | 2,833 | −2.6% |
| Aargau | 3,432 | +2.4% | 6.3% | 2,978 | +6.3% |
| St. Gallen | 2,724 | −4.0% | 5.0% | 2,368 | +6.4% |
| Valais | 2,582 | +4.0% | 4.8% | 2,267 | +6.7% |
| Lucerne | 2,361 | +7.9% | 4.4% | 2,000 | +2.8% |
| Ticino | 2,180 | −3.7% | 4.0% | 1,997 | +9.4% |
| Fribourg | 1,985 | +4.7% | 3.7% | 1,581 | −0.9% |
| Schwyz | 1,544 | +12.0% | 2.9% | 1,318 | +5.7% |
| Thurgau | 1,497 | +10.3% | 2.8% | 1,187 | −4.8% |
| Basel-Landschaft | 1,411 | +10.8% | 2.6% | 1,195 | +4.6% |
| Basel-Stadt | 1,377 | +8.8% | 2.5% | 1,084 | −1.4% |
| Solothurn | 1,328 | +4.8% | 2.5% | 1,127 | +3.6% |
| Graubünden | 1,115 | −0.4% | 2.1% | 945 | +5.4% |
| Neuchâtel | 922 | +2.1% | 1.7% | 778 | +2.8% |
| Schaffhausen | 447 | +16.7% | 0.8% | 345 | −3.4% |
| Jura | 375 | +0.8% | 0.7% | 339 | +10.4% |
| Nidwalden | 334 | +9.5% | 0.6% | 249 | −5.0% |
| Appenzell Ausserrhoden | 305 | −7.3% | 0.6% | 244 | +3.8% |
| Obwalden | 226 | +14.7% | 0.4% | 157 | −14.7% |
| Glarus | 204 | −4.2% | 0.4% | 173 | +5.5% |
| Appenzell Innerrhoden | 162 | +18.2% | 0.3% | 98 | −25.2% |
| Uri | 128 | −16.3% | 0.2% | 116 | +6.4% |
The canton of the register office that published the notice. Each canton links to its register page. A change is shown when the year compared against counts at least 20 new companies.
Company formations by sector in 2025
Link to this table| Sector | 2025 | Share | January to October 2026 | vs same months 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Construction | 4,767 | 9.7% | 4,151 | +4.1% |
| Real estate | 4,359 | 8.9% | 3,466 | −1.1% |
| Consulting, marketing and design | 4,340 | 8.8% | 3,610 | +1.4% |
| Finance, insurance and holding companies | 3,997 | 8.1% | 3,159 | +4.0% |
| Retail | 3,985 | 8.1% | 2,907 | −13.6% |
| IT, telecoms and media | 3,599 | 7.3% | 3,627 | +22.5% |
| Restaurants, bars and catering | 3,500 | 7.1% | 2,711 | −7.9% |
| Cleaning, staffing, security and other business services | 3,492 | 7.1% | 2,907 | +1.1% |
| Law, accounting, engineering and research | 2,784 | 5.7% | 2,236 | −0.9% |
| Health and social care | 2,755 | 5.6% | 2,211 | −3.2% |
| Hairdressing, beauty, repairs and other personal services | 2,348 | 4.8% | 1,989 | +2.5% |
| Manufacturing | 2,216 | 4.5% | 1,824 | −0.5% |
| Wholesale, import and export | 1,753 | 3.6% | 1,450 | +0.0% |
| Transport and logistics | 1,523 | 3.1% | 1,235 | −2.3% |
| Agriculture, energy, associations and other | 1,440 | 2.9% | 1,131 | −3.3% |
| Education and training | 1,257 | 2.6% | 916 | −10.1% |
| Arts, sport and leisure | 844 | 1.7% | 784 | +11.2% |
| Hotels and holiday accommodation | 248 | 0.5% | 240 | +23.7% |
The sector is known for 49,207 of the 54,081 companies entered in 2025 (91.0%). The shares refer to these companies. The table counts each company once, so its total is a few short of the new-entry notices.
Survival of new Swiss companies after 1, 3 and 5 years
Link to this table| Entered in | New entries | After 1 year | After 3 years | After 5 years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 51,561 | 94.5% | — | — |
| 2023 | 50,238 | 94.8% | — | — |
| 2022 | 48,497 | 95.2% | 83.2% | — |
| 2021 | 48,930 | 95.5% | 84.2% | — |
| 2020 | 45,236 | 95.4% | 84.7% | 74.8% |
| 2019 | 43,088 | 94.9% | 84.5% | 74.8% |
Share of each year's new entries with no liquidation or deletion notice one, three and five years after entry.
Prospex and BFS counts of new companies
Link to this tableThe Federal Statistical Office (BFS) counts new enterprises from social-insurance records and reports 46,931 for 2023. The commercial register published 50,272 new entries that year: it counts every registered entity, holding companies and firms with no staff included.
| Measure | Prospex (register) | BFS | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| New companies | 50,272 (2023) | 46,931 (2023) | BFS UDEMO |
Cite and download
You may reuse these figures with a link to this page.
Prospex, "Company formations in Switzerland", SHAB data through 31 Oct 2026, https://prospex.ch/reports/swiss-company-formations/
Download every figure (CSV). One row per figure, with its period, canton and source.
More Prospex reports:
How formations are counted
Source: every new-entry notice the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (SHAB) has published since September 2018, parsed by Prospex, through 31 Oct 2026. A month is counted only once every one of its publication days has been fetched and parsed.
A new company is one new-entry notice, of any legal form. New branches of existing companies are counted separately, on the Swiss company statistics page.
The legal form is read from the notice, where the register writes it out in full ("Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung", "société anonyme"). For the few notices that name none, it is the company's legal form on file. The canton is that of the register office that published the notice.
Survival is tracked for each year's new companies. A company that went into liquidation, was deleted or merged into another counts as gone from the date of that notice.
The figures are rebuilt every month, from the same counts as the Swiss company statistics page. A completed year can still move by a few notices when the register publishes a late correction.
Frequently asked questions
- How many companies were founded in Switzerland in 2025?
- 54,088 companies were entered in the Swiss commercial register in 2025, +4.9% on 2024, according to the new-entry notices of the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (SHAB). That is about 148 a day.
- How many GmbH were founded in Switzerland in 2025?
- 22,458 GmbH were entered in the commercial register in 2025, 41.5% of all new companies, against 20,733 in 2024. The same year saw 18,018 new sole proprietorships and 10,560 new AG.
- Which canton has the most company formations?
- Zürich, with 9,909 new companies in 2025 (18.3% of the Swiss total), ahead of Vaud with 5,161.
- How many companies have been founded in Switzerland in 2026?
- From January to October 2026, 45,071 new companies were entered in the register, +1.5% on the same months of 2025. The figures run to 31 Oct 2026 and are updated every month.
- How many new Swiss companies survive five years?
- Of the companies entered in the register in 2020, 74.8% had no liquidation or deletion notice five years later (95.4% after one year, 84.7% after three). The Federal Statistical Office (BFS), which tracks economic activity, finds 50.7% of the enterprises created in 2018 still active after five years.
- Can I reuse these figures?
- Yes, with a link to this page and the date the figures run to. The CSV lists every figure with its period and source.