Top publishers in Europe

The Largest Publishers in Europe

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Europe is still the centre of the global publishing business. Six of the ten largest publishing groups in the world are headquartered in Europe, according to the Global 50 Publishing Ranking 2026, and the largest of all, Bertelsmann, is German. Many of them are not the names readers see on book spines: almost half the revenue of the world’s top ten comes from scientific, professional and educational publishing rather than from books for general readers.

Largest publishers in Europe

How this list is ranked. Publishers are ranked by their 2025 revenue from publishing, as reported in the Global 50 Publishing Ranking 2026, compiled by Rüdiger Wischenbart Content and Consulting. The ranking counts books, digital content and professional information, and leaves out newspapers and magazines. Companies are listed by where the group is headquartered, so Bertelsmann’s figure includes Penguin Random House in the United States. Figures are in euros.

1. Bertelsmann, Germany

€5,930 million

Bertelsmann owns Penguin Random House, the world’s largest trade book publisher, which accounts for €4,981 million of this total, and the Bertelsmann Education Group (€949 million). It moved to first place in the 2026 ranking, with education the fastest-growing part of its publishing business.

2. RELX, UK and the Netherlands

€5,635 million

RELX is the parent of Elsevier, the largest scientific publisher, and of LexisNexis in legal information. See our analysis of how much profit Elsevier makes.

3. Wolters Kluwer, the Netherlands

€4,261 million

A professional information and software company serving health, tax, accounting and legal professionals.

4. Pearson, UK

€4,097 million

Described in the Global 50 report as by far the world’s largest educational publisher, Pearson leads in school textbooks and English language learning materials, but its revenue has declined over most of the past decade.

5. Hachette Livre, France

€3,001 million

France’s largest publisher, which describes itself as the world’s third-largest trade publisher. It has been held by Louis Hachette Group since that company’s spin-off from Vivendi in December 2024.

6. Springer Nature, Germany

€1,926 million

The publisher of Nature and more than 3,000 other journals, Springer Nature has been listed on the stock exchange since 2024 and is one of the largest scientific publishers in the world.

7. Informa, UK

€1,502 million

Informa’s publishing revenue includes Taylor & Francis, a leading academic publisher, alongside the group’s other information businesses.

8. Holtzbrinck, Germany

€1,460 million

The privately owned group behind Macmillan, one of the Big Five English-language trade publishers, and German houses such as S. Fischer and Rowohlt.

9. Klett, Germany

€1,209 million

A family of educational publishers built around school textbooks and learning materials.

10. Cambridge University Press & Assessment, UK

€1,189 million

Combines academic publishing with English language teaching and Cambridge’s international exams. Cambridge University Press, founded in 1534, describes itself as the world’s oldest publisher.

Europe’s largest publishers for general readers

If you are interested in the publishers behind novels, non-fiction and children’s books, these are the largest consumer-book groups based in Europe, with their 2025 publishing revenue from the same ranking (some figures include education):

  • Bertelsmann / Penguin Random House (Germany): €4,981 million for Penguin Random House alone
  • Hachette Livre (France): €3,001 million
  • Holtzbrinck (Germany): €1,460 million
  • Grupo Planeta (Spain): €1,019 million
  • Editis (France): €850 million, owned since late 2023 by Daniel Křetínský’s International Media Invest
  • Bonnier (Sweden): €757 million
  • Messagerie / GeMS (Italy): €733 million
  • Madrigall (France; Gallimard and Flammarion): €684 million
  • Mondadori (Italy): €624 million
  • Média Participations (France and Belgium): €617 million

Two names often found on lists like this one, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster, are American. HarperCollins (owned by News Corp) ranked ninth in the world in 2025; Simon & Schuster, owned by the private equity firm KKR since 2023, no longer publishes its results.

Sources

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