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The UK cities best (and worst) for Black Friday shopping

Skubl ranked 25 UK cities on shopping choice, access to bigger stores and household spending power, using official ONS data.

Published · Data: ONS, NRS, NISRA

See the full rankingDownload the full data (CSV)
  1. #1NorwichEast of England73.1score /100
  2. #2LondonLondon66.2score /100
  3. #3Brighton & HoveSouth East60.4score /100
  4. #25CoventryWest Midlands9.1score /100

Key findings

  • Norwich is the UK's best city for Black Friday shopping.

    It has 5.3 shops per 1,000 residents, 47% above the UK average.

  • Coventry ranks worst.

    It has the fewest bigger stores per head of the 25 cities: 64 per 100,000, 18% below the UK average.

  • London comes second.

    Households there have the most to spend (£36,487 a head, 41% above the UK average).

  • All three Scottish cities make the top 10.

    Edinburgh leads them in 4th.

  • Belfast ranks 5th.

    It has 122 bigger stores per 100,000 residents, second only to Norwich.

  • Two of the bottom three are in the West Midlands:

    Coventry (25th) and Stoke-on-Trent (24th).

The full ranking

All 25 cities, ranked by overall score. The top 5 and bottom 5 are labelled. Each measure is explained in the methodology.

Skubl Black Friday city rankings 2026: 25 UK cities ranked by overall score out of 100. ▲ marks the top 5 and ▼ the bottom 5. Sources: ONS, NRS, NISRA. Sorted by Rank, ascending.
1Top 5NorwichEast of England5.29148£20,61673.1
2Top 5LondonLondon4.6586£36,48766.2
3Top 5Brighton & HoveSouth East4.7595£30,07360.4
4Top 5EdinburghScotland4.06109£31,04358.0
5Top 5BelfastNorthern Ireland4.65122£21,42955.2
6CambridgeEast of England3.90107£27,97949.5
7GlasgowScotland4.36112£20,97446.1
8ManchesterNorth West4.3096£19,88537.2
9AberdeenScotland3.28109£23,46633.7
10CardiffWales3.6097£21,05929.6
11LiverpoolNorth West3.8592£19,87128.9
12NewcastleNorth East3.6695£19,76227.5
13BristolSouth West3.3981£25,33627.3
14LeedsYorkshire and the Humber3.5682£22,58825.6
15LeicesterEast Midlands4.5067£16,78623.0
16BirminghamWest Midlands4.0172£19,20522.2
17SheffieldYorkshire and the Humber3.4188£20,21421.8
18SwanseaWales3.3588£20,25521.1
19DerbyEast Midlands3.3089£19,63519.8
20NottinghamEast Midlands3.4889£17,69619.0
21Bottom 5HullYorkshire and the Humber3.3790£17,73117.7
22Bottom 5SouthamptonSouth East2.9787£20,88616.2
23Bottom 5PlymouthSouth West2.9585£21,42416.0
24Bottom 5Stoke-on-TrentWest Midlands3.3479£17,92513.4
25Bottom 5CoventryWest Midlands3.2364£19,7739.1

Select a column heading to sort. On small screens, scroll the table sideways: rank, city and score stay in view.

Overall score by city
  1. 1Norwich73.1
  2. 2London66.2
  3. 3Brighton & Hove60.4
  4. 4Edinburgh58.0
  5. 5Belfast55.2
  6. 6Cambridge49.5
  7. 7Glasgow46.1
  8. 8Manchester37.2
  9. 9Aberdeen33.7
  10. 10Cardiff29.6
  11. 11Liverpool28.9
  12. 12Newcastle27.5
  13. 13Bristol27.3
  14. 14Leeds25.6
  15. 15Leicester23.0
  16. 16Birmingham22.2
  17. 17Sheffield21.8
  18. 18Swansea21.1
  19. 19Derby19.8
  20. 20Nottingham19.0
  21. 21Hull17.7
  22. 22Southampton16.2
  23. 23Plymouth16.0
  24. 24Stoke-on-Trent13.4
  25. 25Coventry9.1

Find your city

Choose a region to see its cities, their rank in the UK and their rank within the region. Each city has its own link (for example #norwich) to share or cite.

Showing all regions

East Midlands

Cities in East Midlands, with regional rank, UK rank and overall score
In regionCityUK rankScore
1Leicester1523.0
2Derby1919.8
3Nottingham2019.0

East of England

Cities in East of England, with regional rank, UK rank and overall score
In regionCityUK rankScore
1Norwich173.1
2Cambridge649.5

London

Cities in London, with regional rank, UK rank and overall score
In regionCityUK rankScore
1London266.2

North East

Cities in North East, with regional rank, UK rank and overall score
In regionCityUK rankScore
1Newcastle1227.5

North West

Cities in North West, with regional rank, UK rank and overall score
In regionCityUK rankScore
1Manchester837.2
2Liverpool1128.9

Northern Ireland

Cities in Northern Ireland, with regional rank, UK rank and overall score
In regionCityUK rankScore
1Belfast555.2

Scotland

Cities in Scotland, with regional rank, UK rank and overall score
In regionCityUK rankScore
1Edinburgh458.0
2Glasgow746.1
3Aberdeen933.7

South East

Cities in South East, with regional rank, UK rank and overall score
In regionCityUK rankScore
1Brighton & Hove360.4
2Southampton2216.2

South West

Cities in South West, with regional rank, UK rank and overall score
In regionCityUK rankScore
1Bristol1327.3
2Plymouth2316.0

Wales

Cities in Wales, with regional rank, UK rank and overall score
In regionCityUK rankScore
1Cardiff1029.6
2Swansea1821.1

West Midlands

Cities in West Midlands, with regional rank, UK rank and overall score
In regionCityUK rankScore
1Birmingham1622.2
2Stoke-on-Trent2413.4
3Coventry259.1

Yorkshire and the Humber

Cities in Yorkshire and the Humber, with regional rank, UK rank and overall score
In regionCityUK rankScore
1Leeds1425.6
2Sheffield1721.8
3Hull2117.7

Expert comment

“Black Friday is still won on the high street as much as online. Norwich shows what that looks like: lots of shops close together, plenty of bigger stores and the chance to get everything done in one trip. London households have the most to spend, but choice matters just as much, which is why compact cities with busy centres climb the ranking. For any retailer, in store or online, the lesson is the same: give people real choice, make it easy to find, and they will spend.”
— Cameron Batt, retail expert and founder of Skubl

How we ranked the cities

We compared 25 UK cities, covering every UK region and nation, on three measures. Each was scored 0–100 relative to the other cities (min–max scaling). The overall score is the equal-weighted average.

  1. Shopping choice: physical retail businesses per 1,000 residents. This is ONS UK Business Counts 2026 (local units, IDBR snapshot March 2026): retail trade (SIC 2007 division 47), excluding fuel stations (47.3) and online and other non-store retail (47.9).
  2. Access to bigger stores: retail sites with 10 or more employees per 100,000 residents, from the same dataset and with the same exclusions.
  3. Spending power: gross disposable household income (GDHI) per head, 2024 (ONS, released August 2026; 2024 figures are provisional).

Populations are mid-2025 estimates from ONS, National Records of Scotland and NISRA. Each city is measured by its local authority boundary, and London by the Greater London region.

Limitations: Local authority boundaries exclude some major out-of-town centres (e.g. the Trafford Centre is in Trafford, not Manchester; Metrocentre is in Gateshead, not Newcastle). Compact cities such as Norwich and Cambridge serve wide surrounding areas, which raises their per-resident figures. Business counts are rounded to the nearest 5 by ONS. We tested the ranking against this rounding and against alternative scoring methods: Norwich ranks first and Coventry last in every run of the rounding test and in a z-score version of the ranking. Data retrieved from Nomis on 6 November 2026.

Sources

Data and media

The full data

All 25 cities, every measure, score and underlying count.

Download the full data (CSV)

Media enquiries

For media enquiries, interviews with Cameron Batt or regional data, contact Cameron Batt, hello@skubl.com.

Embed or cite this study

Please credit and link to Skubl when using this data.

https://skubl.com/insights/black-friday-city-rankings

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