28 Verified UK Paddleboarding Statistics (2026)

Nobody in the United Kingdom counts paddleboarders the way the Americans count boaters. There is no annual casualty report, no registration figure, no single official number for how many people own a board.

What exists instead is a governing body that publishes its membership every year, a national survey of 12,114 adults, a lifeboat charity that logs every launch, and one accident investigation that put hard numbers on the page.

The 28 figures below come from those four places, with the source named for each one. Where a body has corrected its own earlier figure, we give you the correction rather than the version that reads better.

How many people paddle in the UK

24 percent of UK adults paddled in 2025

The Watersports Participation Survey puts paddlesports participation at 24 percent of UK adults in 2025, against 18 percent in 2023. That is the broadest measure available, covering canoeing, kayaking and paddleboarding together rather than boards alone.¹

The figure rests on 12,114 interviews

The survey was carried out by Savanta, which interviewed 12,114 UK adults online between 15 September and 14 November 2025. It is a large sample by the standards of sport participation research, and it is the only national one that reaches paddleboarding at all.²

The survey warns against comparing its own years

The 2025 edition states that year on year comparisons should be treated with caution because of differences in approach and supplier. The rise from 18 to 24 percent is therefore a change in two measurements, not a proven change in behaviour, and anyone quoting it should say so.³¹

Paddleboarding grew 285 percent in four years

The Marine Accident Investigation Branch recorded that paddleboarding was the fastest growing water sport in the UK and that between 2015 and 2019 participation increased by over 285 percent to more than 600,000 people. The underlying figure comes from the Arkenford watersports survey of 2019, quoted inside the accident report.⁴

Go Paddling had 1.23 million visits in 2024

Paddle UK reported 1,232,373 visits to its Go Paddling site in 2024, against 633,275 in 2021. Traffic to a route finder is a soft measure of interest rather than participation, but it is the only one that runs as a clean annual series.⁵

There is no UK register of paddleboards

Unlike the United States, where 628,507 paddlecraft appear on state registers, the UK has no registration requirement for a paddleboard on most waters. Every UK participation figure is therefore a survey estimate, never a count.⁶

The governing body in numbers

Paddle UK ended 2025 with 75,460 active members

The 2025 annual report gives 75,460 active members at the end of the year. Paddle UK is the national governing body for canoeing, kayaking and paddleboarding across the UK, so a board owner is one line in that same total as a slalom racer.⁷

Membership peaked at 77,177 in July

The same report gives a mid year peak of 77,177 in July 2025, about 1,700 above the December figure. Membership in this sport has a summer and a winter, and any single number quoted without its month is missing that.⁸¹

The 2024 figure was corrected downwards

Paddle UK originally published roughly 75,000 active members at the end of 2024, alongside a drop of 14 percent. A data cleansing project then found around 3,000 duplicate records, so the corrected end of 2024 figure is closer to 72,000. The higher number is still widely quoted and should be attributed as originally published.⁹²

Churn fell from 31.8 percent to about 24.9 percent

Between the two reporting years the proportion of members not renewing fell from 31.8 percent to roughly 24.9 percent, which turned a shrinking membership into net growth of about 4.8 percent. Retention, not recruitment, is what moved the total.¹⁰

20,000 joined in 2024 and 55,000 stayed

The 2024 report breaks the total into about 20,000 new members and 55,000 renewals, a retention rate of 62 percent. Roughly one in four members that year was in their first season.¹¹

401 clubs are affiliated in England

Paddle UK counted 401 affiliated clubs in England in 2024. Clubs are the part of the sport that predates the paddleboard boom, and their number has been broadly flat while individual membership moved.¹²¹

56 percent of members are recreational paddlers

Just over half the membership, 56 percent, is classed as recreational rather than competitive or coaching. The governing body describes itself in competitive terms and is used in overwhelming part by people who simply want access to water.¹³

Family memberships are 41 percent of sales

Family memberships accounted for 41 percent of membership sales in 2025, and 96 percent of youth members are inside a family membership rather than joining alone. Almost no young paddler in the UK joins the sport by themselves.¹⁴

38 percent of active members are women

The share of women among active members was 38 percent in 2024, against 37 percent the year before. It is one of the more balanced participation splits in British outdoor sport, and it is moving by about a point a year.¹⁵

The stated target is 120,000 members

Paddle UK has published a target of 120,000 members by 2026. Against 75,460 at the end of 2025 that would need growth of about 59 percent in a year, which no year in the published series comes close to.¹⁶¹

The statutory company membership is a different number

British Canoeing, the registered company behind Paddle UK, filed 65,548 statutory company members for the financial year ending 31 October 2025, against 61,519 the year before. This is a legal membership class and does not match the active membership figure, which is why the two get confused in press coverage.¹⁷

Rescues and near misses

RNLI launches to paddleboarders tripled in five years

Lifeboat launches to paddleboarders rose from 52 in 2019 to 155 in 2023. The RNLI describes this as a triple increase and issued joint safety advice with Paddle UK and the coastguard on the back of it.¹⁸

Lives saved went from 3 to 22

Over the same five years, lives saved by the RNLI in paddleboarding incidents rose from 3 to 22, which the charity describes as a six-fold increase. A life saved is a narrower category than a rescue: it means the crew judged the person would otherwise have died.¹⁹¹

Incident responses rose 126 percent in one year

Counting all incident responses rather than lifeboat launches alone, the figure went from 649 in 2021 to 1,465 in 2022, an increase of 126 percent. That single year is the sharpest movement anywhere in the UK paddleboarding data.²⁰

77 lives were saved over five years, 32 in one of them

The RNLI puts the five year total at 77 paddleboarding lives saved, of which 32 fell in 2022 alone. The concentration in one year matches the incident response spike and the post-lockdown surge in board sales.²¹¹

Every RNLI figure includes the Republic of Ireland

The RNLI operates across the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and none of its published paddleboarding figures are broken out for the UK on its own. Anyone presenting these as UK numbers is overstating them, which is common in coverage of this sport.²²¹

Almost half of launches follow offshore wind or tide

The charity attributes almost half of its launches to paddleboarders to offshore winds and tidal conditions carrying people away from shore. It is the failure mode of flat water conditions that look safe from the beach.²³

The South East alone went from 11 launches to 32

Across the 31 lifeboat stations between Swanage and Southend-on-Sea, launches to paddleboarders rose from 11 in 2019 to 32 in 2023. The regional pattern mirrors the national one rather than being driven by any single coastline.²⁴¹

9 percent of paddleboarders make no safety preparation

The RNLI found that 9 percent of paddleboarders make none of the recommended preparations before going out, such as checking the weather, carrying a means of calling for help or wearing a buoyancy aid. Among kayakers and canoeists the figure is 10 percent.²⁵¹

What the fatal cases show

Four people died on one guided tour in 2021

On 30 October 2021 at around nine in the morning, a commercial paddleboarding tour of nine people went over the Town Weir on the River Cleddau at Haverfordwest in Wales. Four of them died. It is the deadliest paddleboarding incident recorded in the UK and the only one to receive a full accident investigation.²⁶

19 people died at UK weirs in five years

The accident report notes that the national water incident database recorded 19 deaths at weirs in the UK between 2016 and 2020, across all activities. Weirs are a British hazard with no American equivalent in the statistics, which is why safety guidance written for the United States transfers badly.²⁷¹

No UK body counts paddleboarding deaths annually

There is no British equivalent of the American casualty report that produces a national paddleboarding death count every year. UK figures come from lifeboat launches, individual investigations and a general water incident database, and none of the three is a census. For a sense of scale from a country that does count, see our page on how many people die paddleboarding in the United States.²⁸

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Watersports Participation Survey 2025, executive summary (paddleuk.org.uk)
2. Watersports Participation Survey 2025, executive summary (paddleuk.org.uk)
3. Watersports Participation Survey 2025, executive summary (paddleuk.org.uk)
4. Marine Accident Investigation Branch, Report 13/2022 (gov.uk)
5. Paddle UK, Annual Report 2024 (paddleuk.org.uk)
6. U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Table 37 (uscgboating.org)
7. Paddle UK, Annual Report 2025 (paddleuk.org.uk)
8. Paddle UK, Annual Report 2025 (paddleuk.org.uk)
9. Paddle UK, Annual Report 2025 (paddleuk.org.uk)
10. Paddle UK, Annual Report 2025 (paddleuk.org.uk)
11. Paddle UK, Annual Report 2024 (paddleuk.org.uk)
12. Paddle UK, Annual Report 2024 (paddleuk.org.uk)
13. Paddle UK, Annual Report 2025 (paddleuk.org.uk)
14. Paddle UK, Annual Report 2025 (paddleuk.org.uk)
15. Paddle UK, Annual Report 2024 (paddleuk.org.uk)
16. Paddle UK, Annual Report 2024 (paddleuk.org.uk)
17. Companies House, British Canoeing, company 01525484 (gov.uk)
18. RNLI, safety advice after triple increase in SUP rescues, August 2024 (rnli.org)
19. RNLI, safety advice after triple increase in SUP rescues, August 2024 (rnli.org)
20. RNLI, lifesaving figures show rapid increase, May 2023 (rnli.org)
21. RNLI, lifesaving figures show rapid increase, May 2023 (rnli.org)
22. RNLI, safety advice after triple increase in SUP rescues, August 2024 (rnli.org)
23. RNLI, safety advice after triple increase in SUP rescues, August 2024 (rnli.org)
24. RNLI, safety advice after triple increase in SUP rescues, August 2024 (rnli.org)
25. RNLI, lifesaving figures show rapid increase, May 2023 (rnli.org)
26. Marine Accident Investigation Branch, incident summary, River Cleddau (gov.uk)
27. Marine Accident Investigation Branch, Report 13/2022 (gov.uk)
28. Marine Accident Investigation Branch, incident summary, River Cleddau (gov.uk)