Retail trade remains the most popular direction for opening a small business in Ukraine — 60,300 new FPOs were registered in this area in the nine months of 2026, according to Opendatabot data based on the Unified State Register and data analysis by the Experts Club analytical center.
Retail trade accounts for more than a quarter of all new entrepreneurs registered in Ukraine since the beginning of the year. A total of 222,300 FOPs were opened in January-September.
Computer programming became the second most popular field, with 16,700 new FOPs. Almost the same result was shown by wholesale trade - 16.6 thousand.
About 10.7 thousand new entrepreneurs were registered in the field of education. The same number of FOPs have started activities in the field of food and beverage provision, which includes, in particular, different formats of public catering.
However, the most popular areas of business also lead in terms of the number of closures.
In retail trade, 49,400 FOPs have ceased operations in nine months. Thus, despite the large number of closures, the net increase of entrepreneurs in the industry amounted to about 10.9 thousand.
The situation is different in computer programming. With 16.7 thousand new registrations, 17.1 thousand FOPs ceased operations. Thus, based on the absolute indicators published by Opendatabot, the number of closures in the IT segment exceeded the number of openings by approximately 400.
In wholesale trade, the situation remains positive: out of 16,600 new FOPs, 11,700 closed, which corresponds to a net increase of approximately 4,900 entrepreneurs.
In the field of public catering, about 10.7 thousand new FOPs with 7.9 thousand closures — a positive difference of about 2.8 thousand.
A total of 222,288 FOPs were opened in Ukraine in the nine months of 2026, and 155,645 were closed. The number of new entrepreneurs exceeded the number of those who ceased operations by 66,643.
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