The Financial Times Group continued its run of record revenue in 2025, growing by 5% to £566m.

Operating profit grew by 23% to £51.8m year on year.

FT Group has grown revenue every year since 2017 with the exception of the Covid-hit year of 2020.

These global figures were revealed in consolidated and unaudited figures shared internally and seen by Press Gazette.

Last year marked the tenth anniversary of the FT being wholly owned by private Japanese firm Nikkei, which does not publish any global financial figures for the news group. This means this internal performance report provides the best indicator of the 137-year-old newsbrand’s financial health.

Across the whole business the FT Group now claims to have around 3.5 million people paying for its content and events globally.

The FT Group had a target to reach a “global paying audience” of three million by 2028 but said it passed this milestone last year. 

The global paying audience figure includes Financial Times subscribers, the group’s 17 specialist brands, and FT Live event attendees.

UK accounts for Financial Times Ltd have also been published on Companies House, showing revenue up 5% to £477.3m and operating profit jumping 151% to £18.3m.

The accounts showed that the main FT newsbrand had 1.62 million paying readers across all formats in 2025, of which 1.47 million were digital subscribers (both up 9%). The FT says this total has now grown to 1.9 million.

In the internal report seen by Press Gazette, chief executive Jon Slade said the FT.com website had “more than 700,000 habitual users” in 2025 with more than one million recognised users (those who have signed up with at least an email address).

Where FT Group revenue came from in 2025

Advertising revenue on the FT website and print newspaper (grouped as FT Commercial) had its best year since 2012.

It was up 5% compared to last year to £134.6m, meaning it narrowly surpassed its previous recent high of £134m in 2023.

Advertising revenue made up 24% of the FT Group total, the same as in 2024.

Print advertising was £63.7m while digital advertising exceeded £70m for the first time (on £70.9m).

Slade said in the report: “Digital advertising delivered steady growth, while print remained a high-margin and strategically important part of the portfolio.”

Revenue from individual paying subscribers was up 7% year on year to £116m (21% of group revenue), bringing in an average of £412 per subscriber (up from £400 in 2024).

The FT’s corporate subscriptions and other enterprise services (under the FT Professional division) also continued to grow, by 11%.

The internal report said FT Professional “continued to represent a significant share of the FT Group’s Global Paying Audience. Performance remained resilient despite a more challenging environment, including uncertainty around US government contracts, with corporate renewal rates exceeding 100%.”

Slade told the Press Gazette Future of Media Technology Conference earlier this month: “The majority of our traffic to our site and the majority of the monetisation comes from having a direct relationship with our readers who come to us, they seek us out, they seek out the brand, and they come to us to read our journalism.

“So we put that as our priority business model and then from that audience we can develop our advertising business – but the whole point really of having a subscription business and putting the audience as your primary customer is that it puts control in your hands so you’re less exposed to the things that are happening with third parties and changes in technology.”

FT Live (the events business) generated £60m in revenue (up 61%) and grew operating profit by 72% following the acquisition of Fixed Income Events, formerly Invisso. The division ran 268 events in total with more than 214,000 registrations in 176 countries. Newly-expanded events included Energy Transition Summit: East Med & South Eastern Europe, Banking Summit Asia, Business of Luxury Asia, and Future of Asset Management Middle East.

Revenue across the FT Specialist portfolio of brands like The Banker grew by 7% overall. Endpoints News, which the FT bought in 2023, increased revenue by 19% year on year in 2025.

Media consultancy business FT Strategies brought in almost £12m in revenue in 2025 (down from almost £15m in 2024). FT Group also has an investment arm, FT Ventures.

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