Discover a Decade of High-Growth Insights
A decade of insights!
The 2026 edition of the Top 250 Insights Report reflects a decade of insights into the fastest-growing companies in the Netherlands. For ECE, it is a special ten-year milestone that goes beyond an annual ranking.
This year, we look back across ten years of high-growth data to uncover what has actually driven growth in the Netherlands, and what that means for the decade ahead. The 2026 cohort captures the youngest Top 250 in history: the median firm age has dropped to just 9 years, down from 13 in 2017. Growth is concentrating rapidly in cities, with Amsterdam now home to 78 firms, which is nearly one in three. AI adoption more than doubled in a single year, from 13% to 29%. And high growth is increasingly found where entrepreneurship meets the Netherlands’ biggest societal transitions: energy, industrial technology, and sustainable food.
What is the Top 250?
The Top 250 highlights the 250 most innovative and fastest-growing companies in the Netherlands. Published annually by Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship since 2017, the list is selected on the weighting of absolute (in number) and relative growth (in percentage) of FTEs or turnover between 2022 and 2025, in line with the OECD high-growth firm definition. A company qualifies as a high-growth firm (HGF) if it grew on average by more than 20% annually over a three-year period in FTEs or turnover, with at least 10 FTEs at the start of the measurement period.
The Top 250 differentiates itself from other rankings through its evidence-based methodology, its decade-long longitudinal perspective, and its combination of quantitative data with qualitative research and expert insight.
Key Takeaways: A Decade of High Growth
Societal transitions are becoming growth agendas
High growth is increasingly found where entrepreneurship meets the Netherlands’ biggest challenges. Industrial Tech has grown from just 2% of the cohort in 2017 to 14% in 2026. Energy has risen steadily, fuelled by the energy transition and climate policy. Agriculture and agrifood are emerging as a high-growth sector, reaching 4.8% in 2026. Meanwhile, Retail and Wholesale has declined from 19% (2018–2019) to just 5.2% today.
AI adoption more than doubled in one year
In 2025, 32 firms (13%) publicly showed that AI was core to their operations. In 2026, that figure jumped to 73 firms (29%). These 73 firms split into AI-Natives, whose product is AI, and AI-Enabled firms, which use AI as an operational lever to deliver traditional services at unprecedented speed and scale.
Beyond these 73 firms, quieter day-to-day AI use is far more widespread and may be the most consequential shift of all. Dr. Jana Retkowsky shares 3 best practices when it comes to dealing with AI in the workplace:
1) Surface the AI use already happening.
2) Preserve the friction that AI removes.
3) Invest in human judgment.
Sustainability: present, but not yet embedded
55% of the 2026 cohort carries at least one sustainability indicator. But depth is uneven: only 15 firms have published a formal impact report, and just 9 hold B Corp certification. The easiest sustainability communication gains have largely been made. The harder work in making impact reports, certified commitments, and measurable targets is where most firms still have ground to cover.
Women in leadership: visible but unevenly distributed
42 firms in the 2026 cohort feature a woman founder or C-level executive. Of these, 55% are based in North Holland, reflecting the broader geographic concentration of the high-growth ecosystem. The gender gap in the Top 250 is not only an equity issue: research consistently shows that top management team diversity is linked to stronger performance, greater resilience, and broader scaling capacity.
High growth and the ability to keep growing are two different things. It is tempting to treat fast growth as proof that a company has cracked it. But growth is an outcome. What produces it, and what allows it to persist, is an underlying capability, the organisational muscle to expand rapidly while keeping the business coherent, reliable, and in control of itself."
Our Approach
Top 250 is an annual research publication by Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship (ECE), published since 2017. The research and annual event are supported by nlgroeit, Municipality of Rotterdam, Gain, Dealroom, HelloPrint, Van Lanschot Kempen, Rabobank, bunq and Erasmus Enterprise.
The 2026 cohort was selected using data from Gain, Dealroom, and company registrations via the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (KvK). To be eligible, companies must be headquartered in the Netherlands and meet the OECD high-growth firm criteria. A 50/50 weight was applied to absolute and relative growth between 2022 and 2025.
Ready to join the Top 250 hall of fame?
Does your company deserve to be amongst the Top 250 fastest-growing companies in the Netherlands?
Becoming a valued member of our network positions your brand alongside industry leaders such as Tony's Chocolonely, Action, Mews, Picnic, and FastNed. As part of the cohort, you gain access to influential insights and a custom media kit, equipping you with readily accessible material to share this milestone across your communication channels.
Sign up now for the 2027 edition and we will keep you posted!
Looking to scale your company?
Strategic Foresight and Futures Thinking empowers companies to respond to uncertainties, improve innovation capacity and futureproof their strategy. These interactive sessions take the example use of Strategic Foresight by global organisations such as the World Economic Forum and apply it to SMEs.
Tailor-made scaleup training with our senior facilitators Prof. dr. Justin Jansen and Prof.dr. Tom Mom. Justin Jansen is a Professor of Corporate Entrepreneurship at RSM, renowned for his groundbreaking insights into scaling businesses, leadership excellence, and the organizational strategies that drive enduring success. Tom Mom is a Professor at the Department of Strategy & Entrepreneurship of RSM and the academic director of RSM's Executive MBA. Acclaimed for his research on the strategic renewal and growth of organizations, and strategy implementation, Prof.dr. Mom facilitates training for entrepreneurs, managers and policy-makers.
For Dutch-speaking teams, we invite you to have a look at Groiecollege, a programme in partnership with NLgroeit based on insights from our scaleup research.
