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The construction sector registered the highest growth in terms of number of companies since the start of the pandemic. Miguel Fernández Business Company growth in Malaga province is triple Andalucía's rateMalaga cements its position as home to the region's largest business hub, now accounting for 22% of all companies
Cristina Vallejo
Thursday, 15 January 2026, 16:43
Malaga is the Andalusian province with the highest number of companies registered with social security. This milestone has been achieved in the past five years, because that was not the case at the end of the first year of the pandemic, when Seville narrowly surpassed it in December 2020 (53,130 companies in Malaga compared to 53,413 in Seville).
A year ago, Malaga's productive fabric already consisted of 58,255 companies, exceeding Seville's 56,547. At the end of 2025, there were 59,552, again above Seville's 57,265, as updated on Wednesday by the Andalusian institute of statistics and cartography (IECA). The Costa del Sol province is therefore consolidating its position as the province with the largest number of companies, followed by Seville, Cadiz, Jaén, Almeria, Cordoba and Huelva, in that order.
These figures show that the growth rate of companies in Malaga is much higher than that recorded for Andalucía as a whole. While the Andalusian productive fabric grew by 0.7% in 2025, to a total of 270,842 companies, Malaga's grew by 2.23%, i.e. three times more, to the aforementioned 59,552 companies. No other province achieved this rate of growth. Seville followed, but far behind, with an increase of 1.27%.
There were three Andalusian provinces where the number of companies declined despite the general economic growth last year: Jaén, which suffered a 1% drop to 31,289; Almeria (a 0.7% drop to 30,445 companies); and Cordoba (a 0.07% decline to 28,088).
If we broaden our focus to the last five years, looking at how the number of companies registered with social security has changed between December 2020 and the end of 2025, the picture is very similar. At the end of last year, the productive fabric in Andalucía had grown by 5.56% compared to the year of the pandemic, while in Malaga the increase exceeded 12%. In this case, no other province matched Malaga's pace. The closest was Cadiz, where growth stood at 7.3%, with Seville trailing behind (7.2%). There is only one province where there were fewer companies in December 2025 than in 2020: Jaén, where the decline was 3.35%.
This means that, while Malaga companies accounted for 20.7% of the total for Andalucía in 2020, by the end of 2025 they accounted for 22%.
COMPANIES IN THE SERVICE SECTOR
The data updated on Wednesday by the IECA also provides details by sector. The most important economic activity in Malaga is services: with 46,748 companies, it accounts for 78.5% of the total, compared to 65% in Andalucía as a whole.
Service-sector companies in the province have grown by 1.8% over the past year and by 13.8% over the last five years, compared with increases of 0.75% and 8.7%, respectively, at regional level. This gap is partly explained by stronger performance in retail trade, the largest subsector, with 11,700 companies in Malaga, where numbers have held steady, unlike the decline seen across Andalucía.
Malaga also stands out in three other activities compared with the rest of the region. First is transport and storage, where the number of companies rose by 8% over the past year (compared with 3% in Andalucía), reaching 3,526 companies. Over the last five years, growth in the province has reached 59%, versus 18% at regional level.
Second is information and communications, which grew by 6% in 2025 (3% in Andalucía) and by 33% since 2020, compared with a regional increase of 15%. A similar pattern can be seen in professional, scientific and technical activities, which have expanded by 14% over the past five years, 5% more than in Andalucía as a whole.
The hospitality subsector, the second most important in services after commerce, is growing in Malaga at a similar rate to that recorded in Andalucía as a whole: rates of around 1.5% in the last financial year and 17% in five years.
COMPANIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION SECTOR
After the diverse service sector, the second most abundant in the province of Malaga is construction, with nearly 7,000 companies in total, a figure that represents growth of 4.2% in the last year (compared to 2.67% in Andalucía) and almost 25% since 2020, when expansion in Andalucía was limited to 18.7%. Once again, the Costa del Sol province is the fastest growing in the entire region. Furthermore, this is the activity that has seen the greatest increase in the number of companies in the province of Malaga over the last five years.
COMPANIES IN THE INDUSTRIAL SECTOR
Rates change when we look at industry. Here, the 2,605 companies at the end of 2025 are surpassed by the more than 4,000 in Seville. Malaga also doesn't lead the way in growth in this activity, surpassed by Huelva (highest year-on-year growth) and Seville (highest growth over five years).
The Costa del Sol has at least managed to keep its number of industrial companies from dropping, maintaining it at an almost unchanged figure over the past five years, compared to a drop of around 1% in Andalucía as a whole. In fact, in all Andalusian provinces, except Malaga and Seville, there are fewer industrial companies today than five years ago.
COMPANIES IN THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR
Malaga is also not the leading province in terms of the number of companies in the agricultural sector. The 3,251 companies it has are way below the 16,700 companies in Jaén and the more than 11,700 in Almeria, Cordoba and Seville. Only Cadiz and Huelva are behind. In terms of growth, although Malaga has somewhat recovered over the last year, with an increase of 5.72% (compared to a minimal decline of 0.04% in the region as a whole), it has still suffered a decline of 16.5% over the past five years - the largest drop in Andalucía. Only Almeria has escaped the contraction in the sector since 2020.
LARGER COMPANIES ARE ALSO GROWING MORE IN MALAGA, ALTHOUGH THEIR NUMBER STILL LAGS BEHIND SEVILLE
The productive fabric of Malaga, as well as that of Spain as a whole, is characterised by small businesses. In fact, of the nearly 60,000 companies that make up the province, almost 31,000, more than half, have between one and two employees.
The second most abundant segment is that of companies with between three and five employees, with more than 13,200. However, little by little, the number of companies with 100 or more employees is growing. In Malaga in particular, it is growing faster than in Andalucía as a whole. At the end of 2020, there were 284 companies with between 100 and 249 employees in Malaga, compared to 400 in 2025, representing an increase of 40%. This is not only 10% higher than the growth recorded in Andalucía as a whole (where the number has risen from 1,208 to 1,574), but also the highest among all Andalusian provinces. Seville, with 479, leads this ranking.
If we move up to the next level, to companies with 250 or more employees, there were 186 in Malaga at the end of last year, representing an increase of 46% compared to 2020. Once again, this growth is higher than that of Andalucía as a whole (although behind the 56% recorded in Granada), which stands at 33%, with 867. Once again, Seville is the province with the most companies of this size, ahead of Malaga, with 245.