Small and dense

Basel shows how much a small city can hold. When Nordic Life Science featured the city in October 2025, the region was home to about 800 life science companies and around 33,000 employees, 7.2% of the regional workforce, in a city of about 190,000 people. Pharma giants Roche and Novartis also have their global headquarters there.

“The regional proximity to prominent life science research conducted at universities and research institutes, as well as the proximity to clinical research at the university hospitals, is unique and essential for innovation,” said Deborah Strub, Head of Department Cluster & Initiative and Member of the Management Board, Basel Chamber of Commerce.

Flanders makes a similar case at regional scale. With 6.8 million inhabitants, the northern part of Belgium hosts Pfizer’s largest European manufacturing site, five universities, four university hospitals and eight science parks.

“Flanders’ strengths are concentrations and connectivity,” said Amy LeBlanc, spokesperson at the health innovation cluster Biovia, pointing to a population density of around 500 inhabitants per square kilometer.

Building districts

Elsewhere, hubs are being built district by district. In Stockholm, Hagastaden grew from 59 companies in 2010 to more than 230 by the spring of 2026.

“Stockholm has gone from producing very strong research to becoming a much more complete life science ecosystem, where clinical implementation, investments, and the physical infrastructure now accelerate in parallel,” said Ylva Williams, CEO of Stockholm Science City.

Hagastaden is also home to SciLifeLab, a national research infrastructure where more than 1,000 scientists and other staff work. But being close is not the same as working together. “All the pieces are there, but I think it’s underutilized. We are not mixing enough between the various parts of the ecosystem,” said Annika Jenmalm Jensen, Infrastructure Director at SciLifeLab.

On the west coast, Gothenburg is home to some 600 life science companies and 10,000 employees, and western Sweden accounts for about 18% of the country’s life science companies. The cluster is anchored by one of AstraZeneca’s global research sites and Sahlgrenska University Hospital, and by the GoCo Health Innovation City, whose signature building, GoCo House, opened in 2023. More than 60 companies and academic groups have passed through AstraZeneca’s BioVentureHub since it opened in 2014.

Barcelona is building around a new research institute. When Nordic Life Science reported from the city in October 2025, it was home to major hospitals such as Vall d’Hebron, Hospital Clínic, Bellvitge and Sant Joan de Déu, and had one of the highest numbers of clinical trials among European cities. The EUR 110 million CaixaResearch Institute, Spain’s first institute dedicated to immunology, is planned to house 45 research groups and more than 500 people at full capacity from 2034.

“We want this project to be a lever for Barcelona, Catalonia, and Spain to gain visibility and appeal,” said Àngel Font, Executive Director of the CaixaResearch Institute.

The capital question

Across the hubs, funding for young companies was the recurring weak point. In the UK, venture capital picked up in early 2026, rising 17% quarter on quarter to GBP 516 million, according to the BioIndustry Association (BIA). But the earliest rounds stayed difficult.

“Seed rounds and series A have been quite challenging. It’s linked to investors favoring slightly more mature deals, which are perhaps a little more de-risked,” said Jane Wall, Managing Director of the BIA.

In Basel, Strub named limited venture capital for scale-ups as one of the region’s central challenges. In Barcelona, health start-ups were mainly backed by large pharmaceutical companies or international funds, as local capital remained limited. 

In Stockholm, Michael Dabrowski, CEO of Pelago Bioscience, pointed to what is lost when large drug discovery employers leave. “We need a critical mass of employers and financing because this early drug discovery is such a risky business,” he said.

Incentives and infrastructure

Some regions compete on rules as much as research. Mikael Larsson, Foreign Investment Advisor for Scandinavia at Flanders Investment & Trade, highlighted Belgium’s Innovation Income Deduction, which allows companies to deduct up to 85% of qualifying IP income. Larsson also pointed to logistics: several of Europe’s biggest ports are in Flanders. Antwerp-Bruges is the second largest in Europe.

In Gothenburg, the gap was what happens after the start-up phase. “One of the main challenges is that we don’t have access to enough test beds in Sweden in general – that often results in companies moving abroad,” said Cecilia Edebo, CEO of Sahlgrenska Science Park.

For some companies, access to university infrastructure is what made a start possible. “Through collaboration with these institutions we’ve been able to access infrastructure that otherwise would have been prohibitively expensive for us as a small company to develop. That would have made Atley a non-starter from the beginning,” said Milton Lönnroth, co-founder and CEO of Gothenburg-based Atley Solutions, which develops automated manufacturing for radiopharmaceuticals.

In the end, the strengths look alike: research, hospitals and companies close together. So does the challenge: making sure young companies can find the capital and infrastructure to grow where they started.

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