UK creative services exports worth almost £60bn

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The value of exported UK creative industries services was an estimated £59.4bn in 2023, contributing to a £21.1bn UK trade surplus in creative services, official data shows.

Creative industries services exports accounted for 12.7 per cent of all UK services exports, equivalent to more than one in eight pounds sterling generated for the UK through export services income.

In 2018, creative industries accounted for 10.9 per cent of UK services exports, meaning that between 2018 and 2023, the share of all estimated UK services exports revenue generated by the creative industries has risen by 16.5 per cent overall.

Estimated imports of creative goods into the UK have also risen. The value of UK creative industries imports was an estimated £38.3 billion service imports in 2023, or 13 per cent of UK service imports. This percentage has risen from 12.6 per cent in 2022 and from 8.3 per cent in 2018.

From 31 December 2020, the free movement of people and goods and services between the UK and the EU ended. This led to changes to the way that HMRC collects trade in goods statistics. As a result, there is a break in the time series for UK to EU goods export estimates from 1 January 2021 and for EU to UK goods imports from 1 January 2022. This has reduced comparability across the years.

However, the trade surplus earned by the UK creative industries – namely the value by which export income exceed imports – was a significant £21bn in 2023. Find more data on the size of the UK creative industries in our Facts and Figures.

The data also includes figures for the cultural sector, which has some overlap with the creative industries but is defined as having a cultural object at its core and therefore captures more activity from organisations such as galleries, museums, archives and historical sites.

In 2023, the value of services traded by businesses in the cultural sector was estimated as:

• £7.3 billion service imports, 2.5 per cent of UK service imports (up from 2.3 per cent in 2022 and from 2 per cent in 2018).
• £13.5 billion service exports, 2.9 per cent of UK service exports (up from 2.7 per cent in both 2022 and 2018).

The cultural sector had a trade surplus of £6.2bn as the value of services exported by the business in the sector exceeded the value of services imported.

All the figures were published by the Department for Culture, Media & Sport.

They cover the different trade balances in 2023 for sectors overseen by the Government department, which include sport and the cultural sector (see chart).

The figures also showed the principal countries for trade of services with the DCMS included sectors.

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More on the DCMS website.