Publication - Progress report

National Innovation Strategy: Scorecard (2026 Update)

Published: 27 October 2026
From: Minister for Innovation, Technology and Tertiary Education, +1 more … Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Tourism and Transport
Directorate: Economic Development Directorate, +1 more … Chief Economist Directorate
Topic: Business, industry and innovation, Economy
ISBN: 9781807756833

The national innovation strategy first published an innovation scorecard in 2023, tracking Scotland's performance against key metrics compiled from publicly available data. In the third annual update to the scorecard, Scotland’s innovation performance is compared to UK and global peers.

Supporting documents

2. Patents granted

Ecosystem:

Concept

Performance assessment:

Performance Worsening

At a glance

There were 170 patents granted to first named applicants with Scottish addresses in 2025, a decrease of 28.6% on the number in 2024. This is the third consecutive year of decline since patents granted peaked at 346 in 2022, following sustained growth between 2018 and 2022.
In 2025, Scotland had an estimated 31 patents per million population, and 0.78 patents per £1 billion GDP.
On a best comparable basis, Scotland remained in the second quartile of the EU27 for number of patents granted.^[7] However, this is the first time since 2019 that Scotland has ranked last within the second quartile.

What this indicator measures

Patents are a commonly used indicator of innovation and support for comparison across countries and regions. However, patent data only captures one form of innovation and should not be interpreted as a complete measure of innovation activity.
This indicator uses patents granted rather than patent applications, as granted patents represent a more tangible measure, although applications have risen (see below).
To support comparisons between regions of different sizes, results are presented as the number of patents granted per million people. Population estimates are based on the latest data published by the National Records of Scotland (NRS), the Office for National Statistics (ONS), and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA).

Current performance

In 2025, there were 737 patent applications with Scottish addresses, a 23% increase on 2024.
Of these, 272 applications were published which is a decrease of 5.9% on last year.
There were 170 patents granted that have applicants with Scottish addresses, 28.6% fewer than in 2024.
In 2025, Scotland had an estimated 31 patents per million population, and 0.78 patents per £1 billion of GDP.

Key data table

Table 2: Number of patents granted in Scotland, 2018 to 2025
Patents Granted	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
Scotland	148	197	253	315	346	273	238	170

Source: IPO

UK comparison

Despite a 28.6% decline in patents granted, Scotland ranked sixth among the 12 UK nations and regions, in the second quartile for patents per million population in 2025.
In 2025, the UK average was 42 patents granted per million people. The highest rates per million were recorded in the East of England (70), the South West (66) and London (48).

International comparison

On a best comparable basis, the EU27 achieved 2.6 patents granted per billion GDP compared with 0.7 in Scotland.^[8]
Scotland remained in the second EU27 quartile for patents granted, alongside Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Ireland, Poland and Luxembourg, in 2025.
Twenty-one EU countries experienced an increase in the number of patents granted, while six experienced a decrease.