Newsquest has reached 159,000 paying digital subscribers, up 18% from 135,000 one year ago, according to the latest figures shared with Press Gazette.
The UK regional press giant, which publishes 200 newsbrands and 50-plus magazines, reported a 20% increase in online subscriptions revenues in its 2025 accounts.
The accounts reveal that Newsquest had 145,000 paying digital subscribers in the year to 31 December 2025, representing a 32% year-on-year increase.
Overall revenue for Newsquest fell by 1.9% to £182.6m and profit before tax, interest, deductibles and amortisation (EBIDTA) grew by 1.4% to £43.4m.
Newsquest has joined news giant Reach in calling out the BBC for “leveraging its unfair market position”.
Writing in the main Newsquest Media Group accounts chief executive Henry Faure Walker said: “We believe we have significant opportunity to grow digital subscriptions as we further improve audience engagement.
“We hope that Government and Ofcom will at some stage feel brave enough to restrain the BBC’s unnecessary encroachment into local online news, using their license fee subsidy to try and out compete and duplicate the output of commercial local news publishers such as Newsquest.”
Profits rise despite revenue decline
Newsquest, which is owned by US media giant USA Today Co (formerly Gannett), comprises three separate limited companies.
One subsidiary Newsquest Clyde and Forth Press, the publisher’s Scottish weekly newspaper business excluding daily titles such as the Glasgow Herald and Times, had its results reported separately in Newsquest’s 2023 financial results.
The subsidiary now files micro-entity accounts, with its figures incorporated into Newsquest Media Group’s accounts in 2024.
Newsquest acquired Archant, now Newsquest Community Media, in 2022. Its titles include local newspapers across eastern England such as the Eastern Daily Press, Norwich Evening News, Ipswich Star.
Excluding Newsquest Community Media, Newsquest Media Group reported revenue down 1.9% to £147.4m and EBIDTA up 3.2% to £32.4m.
Faure Walker said revenues were “broadly stable in 2025” against a backdrop of weak economic growth in the UK.
He added: “We were particularly pleased with the growth we achieved this year in a number of areas such as events and digital subscriptions. We also grew EBITDA again despite weak UK GDP growth and the increase in costs driven by the national minimum wage and employer’s national insurance.”
In 2025, Newsquest Media Group’s full-time staff count fell by 2.3% to 1,523 employees while staff costs increased by £1.7m (1.6%) to £73,147. The marketing and sales department saw the biggest cuts, down 6.9% from 361 employees to 336. Editorial fell by 0.9% to 655 staff.
Faure Walker added: “With digital consistently over 50% of advertising revenues, and the number of digital subscribers up over 30% year on year, the company is making good progress to a more sustainable, digitally-led business model.
“Although traditional print revenues continue to decline, we are pleased that our newspaper sales performance has remained strong compared to peers, and this is reflected in our position as the UK’s largest regional newspaper group by circulation, as well as by the number of titles we publish.”
In financial results for Newsquest Community Media, group finance director Paul Hunter said a key decision taken during 2025 was ongoing investment into adopting new technology including AI.
Similar to Newsquest Media Group, turnover was impacted by changes to national insurance and minimum wage in 2025, as well as “slowing of spend by advertisers”.
“Despite these headwinds there were some positive achievements of revenue growth; online subscription revenues grew by 38%, and digital revenue grew by 7%,” said Hunter.
Newsquest ‘third most visited news platform’
In 2025, Newsquest said it reached almost 2.8 billion page views across its newsbrands and in January 2026 published 59,470 local stories (1,918 per day), a year on year increase of 10.2%.
It claimed to reach more than 24 million people in the UK per month via its websites.
Faure Walker said: “The audiences of our local news sites are impressive and continue to grow both in total volume and in engagement… People love local news, and we believe that with the right approach, local news publishing has a vibrant future.”
Newsquest local titles Herald Scotland and Oxford Mail have recorded strong growth in both audience and engagement during 2026 according to Press Gazette’s ranking of 50 biggest news websites in UK.
AI for ‘enriching local news’
Looking at the prospects for 2026 Newsquest Media Group said in its accounts that it is expecting to be impacted by “weakness of growth in the UK economy, global economic uncertainty and inflationary cost pressures”, but will look to diversify revenue particularly through use of AI.
“We are excited about the opportunities ahead, further diversifying our revenue streams and leveraging new technologies, particularly the transformational opportunity that we believe the smart application of AI will have on further enriching local news and the great work of our local journalists,” said Faure Walker.
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