The biggest pub companies in the UK, 2026
The top 20 UK pub and bar operators ranked by the turnover in their own filed accounts. Tagged by model — managed houses that book the takings, tenanted and leased estates that book rent, and the family brewers that still run their own pubs. Hotels and pure brewers are excluded; the tenanted operators look small for their size, and the methodology explains why.
What the filings show
The top of British pubs is concentrated and getting more so. The big four — Greene King, Wetherspoon, Mitchells & Butlers, Stonegate — bill £8.27B between them, 72% of the whole list, and there's a sharp cliff below them to Marston's and Young's. Greene King leads at £2.54B, though that figure carries its brewing as well as its pubs; Wetherspoon, just behind, is the purest pub business of the lot — every one of its pubs run by the company.
The most important thing on this page is the tag next to each name. A managed operator runs its pubs and books every pint; a tenanted or leased company owns the pubs but lets them to publicans, so it books rent and beer supply, not bar takings. That's why Stonegate — the biggest pub operator in the country by a distance on pub count — sits below Wetherspoon on revenue, and why Punch and Admiral, with thousands of pubs between them, look modest. Turnover and estate size genuinely don't rank in the same order.
And then there are the survivors: 9 family brewers still running their own pubs, several older than the country they operate in is in its current form — Shepherd Neame brewing since 1698, McMullen since 1827. They are a rounding error against Greene King, but in an industry that has consolidated relentlessly into private-equity hands, they are the quiet proof that the independent British brewer-publican is still, just about, a going concern.
Top 20 pub companies in the UK by filed turnover
Latest accounts filed as of June 2026 · refreshed monthly
| # | Firm | Turnover | YoY | Staff | Accounts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Greene King Pub operator and brewing company Greene King Limited, consolidated — CK Asset-owned; turnover includes brewing and supply alongside its managed and tenanted pubs. | £2.54B | +4% | 38,881 | FY to Jan 2026 |
| 02 | Wetherspoon Listed pub and hotel operator J D Wetherspoon plc — every pub company-operated; the purest managed-house model on the list. | £2.13B | +5% | 42,081 | FY to Jul 2025 |
| 03 | Mitchells & Butlers UK pub and restaurant operator Mitchells & Butlers Retail Ltd — All Bar One, Harvester, Toby Carvery, Miller & Carter. | £1.98B | +4% | 35,186 | FY to Sept 2025 |
| 04 | Stonegate Holding company for a pub operator Stonegate Pub Company Pikco Holdings Ltd — the UK’s biggest pub operator by pub count (TDR Capital-owned, includes the former Ei/Enterprise leased estate). | £1.62B | -7% | 14,227 | FY to Sept 2025 |
| 05 | Marston’s Listed pub and hotel operator Marston’s plc — now a pure pub company after selling its brewing to Carlsberg. Figure is FY2024; its FY2025 filing document is not yet retrievable from Companies House. | £899M | +3% | 1,934 | FY to Sept 2024 |
| 06 | Young’s Listed pub and hotel operator Young & Co’s Brewery plc — premium managed London and southern pubs (now brews nothing itself). | £486M | +25% | 6,282 | FY to Mar 2025 |
| 07 | Loungers Cafe-bar and restaurant operator Loungers Ltd — the all-day café-bar group (Lounge, Cosy Club), taken private by Fortress in 2025. | £406M | +15% | 9,557 | FY to Apr 2025 |
| 08 | Fuller’s Listed pub and hotel operator Fuller, Smith & Turner plc. | £376M | +5% | 5,311 | FY to Mar 2025 |
| 09 | Punch leased & tenanted Pub and bar operator Punch Partnerships — leased and tenanted estate; turnover is rent and beer supply, not pub sales, so it looks small for the estate size. | £190M | +5% | — | FY to Aug 2025 |
| 10 | Shepherd Neame brewer & pubs Aquis-listed brewer and pub operator Britain’s oldest brewer (1698), with a Kent-and-South-East pub estate. | £164M | -5% | 2,295 | FY to Jun 2025 |
| 11 | Hall & Woodhouse brewer & pubs Family-owned brewer and pub operator Family brewer (Badger Ales) with a southern pub estate. | £123M | +1% | 1,750 | FY to Jan 2025 |
| 12 | Daniel Thwaites brewer, pubs & hotels Regional brewery and pub operator Lancashire family brewer with pubs, inns and hotels. | £121M | +4% | 855 | FY to Mar 2025 |
| 13 | Amber Taverns Pub and bar operator Community wet-led pubs across the North and Midlands. | £120M | +9% | 43 | FY to Feb 2025 |
| 14 | Joseph Holt brewer & pubs Regional brewery and pub operator Manchester family brewer and pub operator. | £76M | +3% | 486 | FY to Dec 2024 |
| 15 | Admiral Taverns tenanted Private equity-backed pub operator Admiral Taverns Ltd — community wet-led tenanted estate; turnover is rent and supply, not pub sales. | £68M | +41% | — | FY to Jun 2025 |
| 16 | Nightcap bars Cocktail bar group operator Nightcap plc — premium cocktail bars (The Cocktail Club, Adventure Bar). | £73M | — | 1,007 | 15-mo period to Sept 2024 |
| 17 | Wadworth brewer & pubs Regional brewery and pub operator Wiltshire family brewer and pub operator. | £41M | +6% | 559 | FY to Jan 2025 |
| 18 | Everards brewer & pubs Independent regional brewery and pub operator Leicestershire family brewer. | £38M | +5% | 162 | FY to Sept 2025 |
| 19 | McMullen brewer & pubs Family-owned brewery and pub operator Hertford family brewer (1827). | £36M | +4% | 2,007 | FY to Sept 2024 |
| 20 | Timothy Taylor brewer & pubs Independent family-owned brewery Keighley brewer (Landlord) with a small pub estate. | £35M | +6% | 147 | FY to Sept 2024 |
The next 1
Firms ranked 21–21
| 21 | Oakman | £19M | +1257% | FY to Jun 2024 |
The firms we can't rank
The missing pub names are leased estates that file no turnover, and brewers we don't count as pub operators.
- Star Pubs (Heineken) — Heineken’s ~2,400-pub leased estate files audit-exempt with no separately disclosed turnover
- New River / Hawthorn — the community-pub estate files through a REIT and property entities without a comparable pub-operating turnover
- BrewDog — primarily a brewer; its bar revenue isn’t separately disclosed at scale
How this list is built
Source. The latest annual accounts each firm filed at Companies House. Where a firm files consolidated group accounts, the group figure is used; the entity ranked is named under each firm. Where a firm filed a transition period longer or shorter than twelve months (flagged in the Accounts column), the table shows the filed figure but the firm is ranked on its annualised equivalent.
Who counts as a pub company. Operators of pubs and bars — managed houses, tenanted and leased estates, and family brewers with pub estates — tagged by model. We exclude hotel groups (Whitbread/ Premier Inn, Travelodge), pure brewers and suppliers that don't operate pubs (Heineken UK, the Carlsberg Marston's brewing JV), and intra-group subsidiaries of ranked operators.
The model caveat. Managed and tenanted turnover are not like-for-like: a managed operator books bar takings, a tenanted one books rent and beer supply, so the same estate size produces very different revenue. The tags say which. Where a leased estate files no disclosed turnover (Star Pubs), or a company's latest filing isn't yet retrievable (Marston's, shown on its prior year), we say so.
Cadence. Rebuilt monthly as new accounts land. Spot a pub company we've missed or misread? Tell us — the methodology only works if it's challenged.
Quick answers
- Who is the biggest pub company in the UK?
- By filed turnover, Greene King at £2.54B (its figure includes brewing as well as pubs), then Wetherspoon and Mitchells & Butlers. By number of pubs, though, Stonegate is the biggest operator in the country — turnover and estate size don't rank in the same order.
- Why does Punch (or Admiral) look so small for its size?
- Because of the model. A tenanted or leased pub company owns the pubs but lets them to self-employed publicans, so its turnover is the rent and the beer it supplies — not the pints sold over the bar. A managed operator like Wetherspoon books all the takings. The same number of pubs produces wildly different turnover depending on which model a company runs.
- Are the family brewers really still going?
- Yes — 9 family brewers with their own pub estates are on this list, several of them centuries old: Shepherd Neame (1698), McMullen (1827), Joseph Holt, Hall & Woodhouse, Wadworth and Timothy Taylor. They're a fraction of the size of the giants but among the most enduring private companies in Britain.
- Why isn't Heineken's Star Pubs here?
- Star Pubs runs roughly 2,400 leased pubs for Heineken but files audit-exempt accounts with no separately disclosed turnover, so it can't be ranked. Heineken UK itself is a brewer and supplier, not a pub operator, and is excluded. Both are named in the firms we can't rank.