How many people climb, according to whom.

Read these numbers carefully

Every figure on this page is the named body's own claim, with its date. The methods differ widely: one is a modelled worldwide estimate, some are membership counts, some are national surveys that lump climbing in with other activities. They cannot be added together or compared directly, and several are years old.

Worldwide

The most recent worldwide figure we found is 44.5 million climbers, from the 2019 annual report of the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC), the body now called World Climbing. As Climbing Business Journal reported on 7 May 2020, the figure came from a study by the Italian firm Vertical Life. It counted indoor and outdoor climbers, left out hikers and adventure-park users, and weighted average per-country climber shares by world population, minus people living in extreme poverty.

Earlier IFSC material for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic bid is reported to have given 25 million climbers in 2013 and an estimated 35 million in 2015; we saw that only in a search summary, so it is unconfirmed. Vertical Life's 2020 International Climbers' Survey, according to a search summary of Climbing Business Journal coverage, drew 12,565 responses between November 2019 and January 2020, mainly from Europe; also unconfirmed.

We found no newer worldwide estimate from World Climbing for 2020 to 2026. The 44.5 million figure is a 2019 estimate.

Memberships

Membership counts measure people who join a body, not people who climb, and some bodies cover more than climbing: the FFME, for example, covers mountaineering, canyoning and other non-motorised mountain sports (Wikipedia).

The governing bodies themselves are described on the governing bodies page, which also gives the American Alpine Club and Alpine Club of Canada figures that Wikipedia and the Canadian Encyclopedia report.

England: Sport England's Active Lives survey

England has a national activity survey, Active Lives, run by Sport England. The BMC has reported its results several times, but the figures come from different releases and categories, and they do not line up.

• In June 2023 the BMC reported that the "Adventure Sports" category, which includes climbing and bouldering, had about 278,000 regular participants, up on the previous year. No separate climbing figure was given. The same article gave 3.58 million regular hill and mountain walkers, up from 3.39 million, and 2.46 million in 2015/16.
• A BMC hill-walking article (dated 28 April, year not shown) on the first Active Lives report covering a period without pandemic restrictions gives the Adventure Sports figure as "approximately 2.78 thousand". That appears to be a units error for the 278,000 in the June 2023 article.
• An earlier BMC post, undated and seen only in a search summary, gave about 170,000 indoor climbers and about 100,000 outdoor climbers within 2.14 million people walking, climbing or mountaineering twice a month.
• In 2010 the BMC reported that "climbing and mountaineering", a combined category in the older Active People Survey covering indoor and rock climbing, bouldering, mountaineering and hill walking, was one of only four activities on Sport England's list showing a rise.

The BMC itself says, in a page we saw as a search summary, that accurate participation statistics for outdoor sports are hard to obtain. We found no current climbing-only figure for England.

United States

The Outdoor Industry Association's 2025 Outdoor Participation Trends Report, in a summary we could see only through a search result, says the US outdoor participant base grew 3% in 2024 to a record 181.1 million, 58.6% of Americans aged six and over. Its climbing-specific figures are in the members-only full report, which we could not read, so there is no US climbing participation figure here.

Climbing Business Journal counted 40 new US gyms and 12 US closures in 2025 (report published 9 February 2026). Gym counts measure facilities, not climbers; the climbing gyms page has the full figures.

Competition spectators

Climbing Business Journal, reporting the IFSC's 2019 annual report, gave that year's World Cup crowd estimates as about 18,000 at Chamonix, 10,000 at Briancon, 9,000 at Munich and 7,700 at Vail. Those are the IFSC's claims for 2019.