Trends · data through September 2026

Bookstores in the United Kingdom

Iceflower tracks 2,518 stores from 1,256 bookstore chains in the United Kingdom. Foyles grew fastest over the last year, ahead of Waterstones and Station Stores.

Rankings come from real card and bank transactions across a panel of 130M+ US and EU consumers. We publish relative growth and rankings, never revenue figures. About the data

Tracked chains: 1,256
Tracked stores: 2,518
Consumer panel: 130M+

Growth ranking

Fastest-growing tracked bookstore chains

Ranked by year-over-year growth of share of tracked local spend. Arrows show movement in the rankings since last year. Each dot in the chart is one tracked chain: bigger market position to the right, faster growth higher up, more tracked stores in a bigger dot. Colors match the store map below. Foyles and Waterstones sit in the high-growth half.

# Chain YoY growth

Rank	Chain	Rank movement	YoY growth
1	F Foyles	-	+16.5%
2	W Waterstones	-	+15.1%
3	S Station Stores	-	+10.9%
4	N News Shop	▲1	+6.2%
5	K Kiosk	▲1	+4.1%
6	D Daunt Books	▲1	+4.1%
7	G Greetings	-	+1.9%
8	S Scotts	-	+0.3%
9	W WHSmith	-	-9.8%
10	C Corner News	▼1	-10.2%
11	D Dunns	▼1	-14.3%
12	P Priory News	▼1	-31.9%

WHSmith
Waterstones
Hillingdon News
H R S Newsagent
Indigo
Travelling Man
Birmingham Books
Other tracked chains

Store footprint

Store map

2,518 tracked store locations in the United Kingdom. The 7 largest tracked chains are highlighted.

WHSmith (821)
Waterstones (305)
Hillingdon News (1)
H R S Newsagent (1)
Indigo (6)
Travelling Man (4)
Birmingham Books (1)
Other tracked chains

Top tracked chains by store count

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