Climbing gyms: who sets the rules and how many there are.

The wall standard: EN 12572

In Europe, the structures themselves are covered by EN 12572. The British Standards Institution (BSI) lists BS EN 12572-1:2017 as setting safety requirements and test methods for artificial climbing structures with protection points, published on 31 January 2017 and marked "Current, Under Review". BSI says Part 1 includes a test simulating a shock perpendicular to the wall surface and a test of the static strength of protection-point connections, and that it does not apply to ice climbing, dry tooling or playground equipment. The Estonian Centre for Standardisation's catalogue lists Part 2, for bouldering walls, and Part 3, for climbing holds, as EN 12572-2:2017 and EN 12572-3:2017. The indoor climbing page has more on the series.

United States: the Climbing Wall Association

The Climbing Wall Association (CWA) says it began as part of the Outdoor Recreation Coalition of America, now the Outdoor Industry Association, and was incorporated as an independent nonprofit in May 2003. Its founding board members were Bob Richards, Rich Johnston and Nate Postma. It says it works through advocacy, industry standards, industry news and data, certification and professional development programmes, and events.

The CWA's standards page (read 21 October 2026) names four areas:

• Certification programmes for walls and staff.
• Industry Practices, the management and operating policies for wall operators.
• Design and Engineering of manufactured climbing structures.
• Structural Inspection.

It runs Engineering, Operations and Certification committees, and says that use of any CWA standard is voluntary. A search summary of the CWA's pages says a fourth edition of Industry Practices was released in 2025; the standards page itself does not give edition years, and the CWA's Industry Practices page names the Third Edition (with no year), so the fourth edition is unconfirmed.

The CWA lists the chapters of Industry Practices as professional ethics; administration and business practices; human resource management; client orientation, training and assessment, which includes novice instruction, top-rope and lead belay tests and auto-belay orientation; personal protective equipment; and climbing and facility operations, which cover supervision plans, belaying and climbing policies, minors, instruction programmes and route-setting.

United Kingdom: the Association of British Climbing Walls

The Association of British Climbing Walls (ABC) says it was founded in 1994 and represents over 200 climbing and bouldering walls in the UK and Ireland (6 May 2025). An older UKClimbing notice, seen in a search summary, says instead that it had traded since 1995 and had around 175 wall members. The ABC's "over 200" figure is its membership, not a count of every wall; its public pages give no total number of UK walls.

The ABC Code of Practice

The ABC's Code of Practice, approved by the BMC (no date or version is shown on the page), is a minimum standard for all climbing walls whatever their size. Walls can go further by becoming full ABC members and following the members-only ABC National Guidelines. Among its requirements, the Code says:

• Only competent users may climb roped routes unsupervised.
• Novices need supervision by a competent person, and competence should be documented.
• Novice boulderers should have a safety induction or be supervised.
• Instruction must be given by an appropriately qualified instructor.

Accreditation

In May 2025 the ABC launched what it calls the first accreditation scheme for the indoor climbing industry, supported by the BMC and Sport England and open first to walls in England and Wales. The ABC says assessment covers inspection and maintenance schedules, staff training, safeguarding, management of personal protective equipment, risk management and emergency response.

How many gyms

Each figure below is the publisher's own claim, with its date. They use different methods and are not comparable with each other.

North America

Climbing Business Journal (CBJ) published its Gyms and Trends 2025 report on 9 February 2026, based on a survey of 240 facilities. CBJ's figures:

CBJ's public page gives no total number of gyms. IBISWorld, a market-research firm, estimates 574 climbing gym businesses in the US in 2025, up 4.6% on 2024. That is a single-source estimate we could not confirm, and IBISWorld's definition of the industry may differ from CBJ's.

United Kingdom

The ABC's fifth climbing wall survey, published on 6 November 2025, reports that:

• 62% of walls opened in the previous four years offer bouldering only, and 46% of all walls surveyed are bouldering only.
• Group-owned walls rose from 29% in 2023 to 36% in 2025, with an average group of 4.5 walls.
• Staff on PAYE contracts rose from 55% to 71%.
• The average age of a wall rose from 9.6 to 10.3 years.

This site does not recommend individual gyms. The gym safety page in the safety section covers what is published about safety indoors.