Membership Update 2025

26 March 2026

  • 17% increase in active membership, to 7.2m members

  • 1.7m members joined in the year

  • £3.5bn: how much members spent with us, up by 12%

In 2025, our vision to co-operate to build more value for our members every day turned one. We are proud that we’ve stayed true to this objective even through a testing year.

Overall, our goal is to make membership irresistible and indispensable. We want to share value with our members and the communities they’re part of, but also to help people to see and feel this value. By doing this, we believe we encourage more people to engage in the unique model that is our Co-op and its democracy.

In 2025, we advanced this agenda. We continued to grow our membership numbers, going beyond seven million active members in the year, and increasing our ambitions as we did so. Our new goal is to reach ten million active members by 2030, up from our previous target of eight million.

We’re not just reaching more members, we’re reaching different members. In 2025, we expanded our democracy to younger demographics as we opened stores on university campuses, continued our presence at UK festivals and reduced the amount that members need to spend with us in order to vote at our AGM. Our average member age decreased by a year3, and we saw an 11% increase in members under 25 joining – from 344,800 in 2024 to 382,800 in 2025.

Our vision in 2025

Ownership value

Members own our Co-op and can shape our business. One of our objectives is to empower our members so that they can have an influence in the business they own, and we made clear progress here in 2025.

We saw over 52,000 people voting at our Annual General Meeting (AGM), a substantial increase on 2024 numbers (over 43,000​) as we changed our eligibility criteria to extend voting rights to more members. Members can also get involved in our business through everyday opportunities on our app, website and in person. We call these moments to ‘Join In’, and in 2025, 20% more members did so than in 2024.

In October, we held a series of events to engage members with pop-up cafés, local get-togethers and online conversations, with a 28% rise in physical attendance at pop-ups against last year.
Aside from these formal moments for participation, it’s vital that we build our members’ priorities into our business throughout the year. To that end, over 37,000 members shared their views and opinions on the world around them in our Big Member Survey for 2025.

Economic value

Our Co-op should offer the best value for everyone who buys from us, not just members. But owning our business should come with financial benefits. This is one of the ways that we engage more people in the democracy of our Co-op.

In 2025, we increased value to our members by price-matching a number of everyday essentials to Aldi – an initiative that reached 40% of baskets. We also ran promotions on categories that matter most like meals, shared personalised offers and launched Member Prizes, where members can exclusively enter monthly prize draws.

Members also helped us design what economic value will look like in the years ahead, giving feedback on an app trial using digital stamps.

Social value

We act on the things that matter to our members. In 2025, we supported our members’ communities, campaigned on their behalf and contributed to causes they care about.

For all our achievements in this area, read our Social Value and Sustainability report, but to highlight just a few wins:

  • At the end of the year, we’d raised over £6.5m for Barnardo’s since 2023, with a huge £3m raised in 2025 alone. This was made possible through our colleagues, members, customers and suppliers working together, from donating at tills to running fundraising events.

  • An installation of over 6,500 solar panels was completed at our Biggleswade Depot, generating electricity to support our largest regional distribution centre.

  • We announced a new fund to support sustainable farming practices. By the end of the year, we had provided over £760,000 of funding with farmers in our supply chain to support them in reducing emissions and promoting nature on their farms.

  • Our Local Community Fund has now shared £120m since 2016 with causes across the nation, from sports clubs to local gardens.

  • Based on our members’ priorities, we announced our decision to stop sourcing from countries where the international community has identified serious risks of community-wide human rights abuses and violations of international law.

  • Our charity, the Co-op Foundation, supported 135 causes and individuals in 2025. Through campaigning and funding, the foundation creates opportunities for young people.

  • We continued to support 38 Co-op Academies, who provide an education based on co-operative Values and Principles to over 20,000 students.

Read the 2025 membership update as part of our Annual Report.