State of the Fitness Business 2026: Annual Industry Report

The 2026 fitness industry in one paragraph

The US fitness industry generated $38.6 billion in revenue across 43,100 facilities serving 74.2 million members in 2025, according to the IHRSA 2025 Global Fitness Industry Report. The market grew 6.2 percent year-over-year, slightly outpacing the 5.4 percent compound rate from 2021 to 2024 as the industry finished rebuilding from the 2020 contraction. The headline numbers hide the real story. Boutique studios now account for 42 percent of US club count but only 28 percent of revenue. Big-box chains hold 47 percent of revenue with 31 percent of locations. Independent gyms are shrinking in count but holding revenue per club. The fitness industry statistics 2026 owners actually need to plan around are not the topline. They are the segment-level numbers, the regional disparities, and the operator-cost data. This report lays out all three. Use it alongside our gym business plan template guide when modeling your own unit economics. For the second-location decision and the 3-location cliff, see our multi-location gym operations playbook.

How big is the US fitness market in 2026

The US fitness, health club, and boutique studio market reached $38.6 billion in 2025 and is projected to hit $40.4 billion in 2026, a 4.7 percent growth rate, based on IBISWorld Gym, Health and Fitness Clubs Industry Report Q4 2025. Globally, the market sits at $114 billion across 210,000 clubs serving 220 million members, per IHRSA global data. The US took four years to recover from the pandemic. Revenue was $35.7 billion in 2019, dropped to $19.4 billion in 2020, returned to $35.6 billion in 2023, and crossed $38 billion for the first time in 2024. The growth story of 2026 is not member count. Membership grew 3.1 percent in 2025 while revenue grew 6.2 percent. Half of the growth is pricing. Gyms raised monthly dues an average of 4.7 percent in 2024 and another 3.9 percent in 2025. Inflation in wages, rent, and equipment costs pushed the increase. Members absorbed it. Churn did not spike. That tells you pricing power exists for the next 18 months, but not forever.

Member count and the 100 million question

The US had 74.2 million health club members in 2025. That is 21.6 percent of the population aged 15 and over, up from 20.3 percent in 2023 and 18.1 percent in 2019. IHRSA set a target of 100 million members by 2030 when the campaign launched in 2018. At the current 3.1 percent compound annual growth rate, the industry lands at 88 million by 2030. To hit 100 million, growth has to accelerate to 5.1 percent annually. That is not happening. The two growth engines of the next five years are population aging into fitness (the 55-plus segment grew 12 percent in 2025) and youth programming (the 15-to-24 segment grew 8 percent). The 25-to-54 segment, the historical core, is flat. If you operate a gym built for 35-year-olds in 2018, you are operating for a stagnant cohort. The Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey shows the 55-plus household segment now spends $312 per year on fitness, up from $228 in 2020. That is your fastest-growing revenue base.

Segment breakdown: where the revenue lives

The industry splits into five operational segments. The mix matters more than the topline because each segment has different unit economics, different churn profiles, and different competitive pressures. The table below is built from IHRSA segment data and FITT Finder internal counts across 150,000-plus indexed businesses.

The boutique segment has more locations than big-box but lower revenue per location. A boutique studio averages $597,000 in annual revenue. A big-box averages $1.35 million. The boutique gap is partly scale (smaller footprint, fewer members) and partly pricing discipline (boutiques discount more aggressively in saturated markets). The independent gym segment is the most stable. Nine thousand three hundred independent gyms generate $4.7 billion in revenue, which is an average of $505,000 per gym. That number has held steady for three years even as the gym count fell from 9,900 in 2022. Independent gyms are consolidating into fewer, sharper operators. That is not a crisis. It is a maturing segment.

The regional picture: where studios are opening and closing

Five metros generate 25 percent of US fitness revenue. New York City leads at $3.1 billion, followed by Los Angeles at $2.4 billion, Chicago at $1.8 billion, Dallas-Fort Worth at $1.4 billion, and Houston at $1.2 billion. Those rankings have been stable for a decade. What changed in 2025 is the growth list. Sun Belt metros added locations faster than the national average: Austin plus 18 percent, Nashville plus 14 percent, Phoenix plus 12 percent, Tampa plus 10 percent, Raleigh plus 9 percent. Declining markets: San Francisco minus 8 percent in studio count, Manhattan minus 4 percent, downtown Seattle minus 5 percent. The San Francisco decline tracks the tech remote-work shift. Manhattan tracks the office-occupancy dip. Per-capita fitness penetration leaders are Denver at 31 percent, Austin at 29 percent, Salt Lake City at 28 percent, and Boston at 27 percent. If you are picking a metro to open in, the Sun Belt growth list and the high-penetration list both point to the same eight cities. Build there.

Revenue per member per month by segment

Average revenue per member per month (ARPMM) is the single number that tells you what kind of business you operate. The industry-wide ARPMM is $43 in 2025, up from $41 in 2023. The spread by segment is enormous. Low-cost big-box (Planet Fitness, Anytime Fitness, Crunch) runs $15 to $25 ARPMM. Mid-tier big-box (LA Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness) runs $40 to $60. Premium big-box (Equinox, Life Time) runs $180 to $265. Boutiques run $120 to $180. Independent gyms run $80 to $140. The premium big-box segment is the only one growing ARPMM faster than inflation. Equinox raised average dues 9 percent in 2024 with no membership decline. The reason is brand pricing power. Independent operators who try to match Equinox on price lose. Operators who try to match Planet Fitness on price also lose. The winning independent gym pricing strategy sits in the $89 to $149 ARPMM band, where the customer pays for a relationship and a coach, not a square footage of equipment. Read our gym pricing strategy guide for the tier math.

Capital, M&A, and who is buying whom

Private equity deployed $4.2 billion into US fitness businesses between 2022 and 2024, according to PitchBook fitness sector data. The big deals: Xponential Fitness IPO in 2021, now operating 3,200-plus franchised studios across 12 brands. Advent International acquired Mindbody for $1.5 billion in 2019 and added ClassPass in 2021. L Catterton took a stake in Solidcore in 2022. North Castle Partners backed 4 Pilates platforms in 2023 and 2024. The story of 2025 was smaller bolt-on deals. Eighty-seven fitness M&A transactions closed, totaling $1.1 billion in disclosed value, per Axios Pro Rata fitness deal tracking. The average deal size fell from $26 million in 2023 to $13 million in 2025. That is a sign of the market normalizing. Mega-deals are gone. Strategic acquirers are buying independent gyms and small boutique chains at 4 to 6 times EBITDA. If your gym produces $400,000 in EBITDA, expect an exit between $1.6 million and $2.4 million in the current market. Plan accordingly in your gym business plan template.

Labor: trainers, wages, and the staffing shortage

The BLS Occupational Employment Statistics report for May 2024 counted 598,000 fitness trainers and aerobic instructors in the US. Median wage: $22.76 per hour, or $47,340 annualized. The 90th percentile earns $37.95 per hour. The 10th percentile earns $13.55. The BLS projects 7.4 percent job growth for fitness trainers between 2023 and 2033, faster than the 4 percent national average across all occupations. Despite the growth, 64 percent of gym owners surveyed by IHRSA in 2025 reported difficulty hiring qualified trainers. The cause is wage competition. Trainers can earn $55 to $90 per hour training clients independently versus $22 to $32 per hour working at a big-box. The studio response has been revenue share. Boutique studios now average 35 to 45 percent revenue share with their trainers, up from 25 to 30 percent in 2020. That wage inflation is permanent. Plan for trainer comp to grow 5 to 7 percent annually for the next three years. The owners who treat trainer pay as a controllable cost are the owners who lose their best trainer to a competing studio every 14 months.

Real estate: rent, buildout, and the location decision

Gym real estate runs $24 to $38 per square foot annually in tier-2 metros and $48 to $95 per square foot in tier-1, per CoStar retail market data. Buildout costs $45 to $120 per square foot depending on complexity. A boutique studio (1,800 to 3,500 square feet) costs $135,000 to $310,000 to build out. A traditional independent gym (4,000 to 8,000 square feet) costs $260,000 to $590,000. A big-box (25,000 to 50,000 square feet) costs $1.8 million to $4.5 million. The trend of 2025 was landlords asking for shorter lease terms. Five-year leases replaced 10-year leases as the standard ask. That hurts operators who need 10 years to amortize a buildout. It helps operators who want flexibility to relocate. If you are negotiating a lease in 2026, ask for a tenant improvement allowance of $25 to $45 per square foot and a free-rent period of 90 to 180 days. Landlords are conceding both in soft retail markets. Read our how much does it cost to open a gym guide for the full buildout worksheet.

Technology: software, wearables, and the AI question

Eighty-seven percent of US clubs use commercial management software. Mindbody holds 38 percent market share, Zen Planner 12 percent, Glofox 7 percent, and the long tail of Mariana Tek, ClubReady, Zenoti, PushPress, and Trainerize splits the rest. The full comparison is in our how to choose gym management software guide. Wearable adoption crossed a threshold in 2024. Forty-one percent of gym members use a wearable (Apple Watch, Garmin, Whoop, Oura) during workouts, up from 28 percent in 2022. Sixty-two percent of members use their gym app if one is available. The AI category is still nascent. Only 8 percent of gyms have deployed AI tools beyond chatbots. The hyped use cases (AI workout programming, AI form correction, AI member communications) are not yet producing measurable revenue lift. Operators who treat AI as a 2026 priority are over-indexing. Operators who ignore it entirely are also wrong. The right move is one targeted pilot: an AI chatbot for after-hours member questions, with human escalation. Cost: $80 to $240 per month. Payoff: 18 to 32 percent reduction in front-desk question volume.

The boutique shakeout: which categories are saturated

Boutique grew fast for a decade. Now the segments are diverging. Cycling studios contracted 4 percent in 2024. The category that SoulCycle and Flywheel built is overbuilt in tier-1 metros. New York City has 132 cycling studios for a population of 8.3 million. That is one studio per 63,000 residents, double the saturation point at which average revenue per studio starts to fall. HIIT is saturated in tier-1 and tier-2 metros. The Orangetheory, F45, Barry, [Solidcore] model hit a wall in 2024. Same-store sales across public boutique franchisors declined 2.1 percent. Pilates is the exception. Reformer Pilates studios grew 22 percent in 2024 and another 18 percent in 2025. The category is still underbuilt outside tier-1 metros. Yoga is stable and fragmented. No franchise owns more than 2 percent of yoga studios nationally. Boxing and kickboxing are growing in the 18-to-34 demographic. The breakout category of 2024 was recovery. Sauna, cold plunge, and contrast therapy studios grew 47 percent. The category is small ($640 million in 2025) but expanding faster than any other segment. Read our boutique fitness studio marketing guide if you operate in a saturated segment. For the full Pilates studio startup guide, see our how to open a Pilates studio.

Big-box versus boutique versus budget: who is winning

The 2025 results are clear. Budget big-box (Planet Fitness, Anytime, Crunch) is winning on member count. Planet Fitness reported 19.7 million members at year-end 2024, up 8.4 percent. The $15 monthly model works because Planet Fitness monetizes the 64 percent of members who never visit. Premium big-box (Equinox, Life Time) is winning on revenue per member. Life Time reported $2.3 billion in 2024 revenue, up 12 percent. Equinox is privately held but estimated at $1.7 billion, up 9 percent. The middle is squeezed. LA Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness, and Gold Gym are losing members at the rate of 2 to 4 percent annually. They are too expensive to compete with budget on price and too generic to compete with premium on experience. The independent and boutique segments are stable in aggregate but the dispersion inside them is widening. The top quartile of independent gyms grew revenue 11 percent in 2025. The bottom quartile contracted 8 percent. The middle is hollowing out. The gyms winning are the ones with sharp positioning, not the ones with the most equipment.

What 1,412 operators told us: the top five challenges

FITT Finder surveyed 1,412 gym, studio, and independent gym owners in Q4 2025. The five challenges cited most often: staffing (64 percent of owners), member acquisition cost (58 percent), rent and real estate (51 percent), member retention (47 percent), and software and tech-stack complexity (39 percent). The staffing number is the most concentrated. Sixty-four percent is up from 51 percent in our 2024 survey. The labor shortage is getting worse, not better, despite wage growth. Owners who solved it cited three interventions: revenue share above 40 percent, four-day workweeks for full-time coaches, and a structured trainer development program that promotes from within. Member acquisition cost is the second-most cited. The average independent gym CPA rose from $58 in 2023 to $74 in 2025. Paid social CPA rose from $42 to $78. Referral CPA stayed flat at $34. The referrer-friendly unit economics are why our referral program ideas for gyms and studios guide is the second-most-read article in our resource library. For real CPC and CPA benchmarks by city, see our gym advertising Google and Meta benchmarks.

Case study: a 600-member Columbus gym navigating 2026

A 600-member independent gym in Columbus, Ohio, opened in 2019 at $89 per month. The two owners took no salary in year one, broke even in month 14, and grew to 412 members by year-end 2022. By 2024, revenue was $612,000 and EBITDA was $148,000. Their 2025 challenge list reads like the operator survey above. Trainer wages went from $26 per hour to $34 per hour over 18 months. Rent rose 11 percent at lease renewal. Paid social CPA on Meta went from $46 to $82. Their response: raise monthly dues to $99, switch from hourly trainer pay to 38 percent revenue share, kill the Meta ad budget and reallocate to a structured referral program, and add a $149 monthly unlimited tier with two personal training sessions included. Twelve months later, revenue grew to $742,000, EBITDA grew to $191,000, and churn fell from 4.2 percent monthly to 2.8 percent. The lesson is the one the 2026 data shows across the industry. Operators who respond to cost pressure with pricing and positioning changes outperform operators who respond with cost cuts. The full breakdown is in our how to reduce churn for fitness businesses guide.

The 2027 forecast: what next year looks like

FITT Finder projects the US fitness industry will reach $42.1 billion in 2027, a 4.2 percent growth rate, decelerating from 2025 as pricing power plateaus. Member count will reach 76.4 million, up 3.0 percent. Boutique growth slows to 3 percent, dragged down by HIIT and cycling saturation. Pilates and recovery continue growing double digits. Trainer wages grow another 5 to 7 percent. Software consolidates. Expect one or two Mindbody-tier acquisitions in 2026. The franchise segment continues consolidating under Xponential, Orangetheory, and F45, with smaller brands either selling or going independent. The independent gym segment will lose another 200 to 400 locations in 2026, but the survivors will be more profitable than at any point in the last decade. The winners of 2027 are the operators who treat 2026 as the year to fix pricing, retention, and trainer comp simultaneously. The losers are the operators who try to wait out the cost pressure.

Methodology and sources

This report combines public industry data with FITT Finder internal data. Public sources include the IHRSA 2025 Global Fitness Industry Report, BLS Occupational Employment Statistics (May 2024 release), IBISWorld Gym, Health and Fitness Clubs Industry Report Q4 2025, Statista Fitness and Health market data, and trade reporting from Club Industry and Athletic Business. FITT Finder internal data covers 150,000-plus indexed fitness businesses, 1.4 million consumer search sessions per month, and a 1,412-respondent operator survey fielded in October and November 2025. Segment revenue and location counts are reconciled across sources. Where sources disagree, we use IHRSA as the primary and footnote the discrepancy. Operator survey respondents were recruited through FITT Finder partner emails and social posts. The sample skews independent (63 percent) and boutique (28 percent), with big-box franchisees (9 percent) underrepresented relative to industry mix. Read at that bias.