Canada lost the fourth-place position it has held for the past five years in StartupBlink’s latest global startup ecosystem rankings, but its top city, Toronto, continues to move up.
StartupBlink released its 2025 Global Startup Ecosystem Index this week. The index ranks the strength of startup ecosystems of 118 countries and 1,473 cities with an algorithm that assesses three key measures: the quantity of startups and supporting organizations, the quality of startups and support organizations, and the business environment of each ecosystem.
Canada has been consistently ranked right behind the top three—the United States (US), the United Kingdom, and Israel—which all show no signs of slowing down. This year, however, Canada has been bumped down by Singapore, which is surging on the back of a nearly 45 percent ecosystem growth rate.
Canada holds the second-lowest ecosystem growth rate in the top five, and the thirteen countries below it all grew faster.
According to the report, the chances of Canada taking the spot back look slim, as Singapore is closer to overtaking Israel than Canada is to overtaking Singapore. Canada also holds the second-lowest ecosystem growth rate in the top five, at nearly 19 percent. Meanwhile, the thirteen countries directly below Canada all grew faster, meaning the likes of Sweden, Germany, and France are primed to push Canada further down the rankings in the coming years.
“Canada’s recent economic performance has been weak, and its startup ecosystem remains heavily reliant on the US for funding and customers, which presents long-term risks, especially with the recent tariff environment,” the report says.
The number of Canadian cities in the global top 1,000 also fell to 39, a return to form after 46 cities made it in the 2024 rankings. Still, Canada remains alongside the US, China, and India as the only countries with three or more cities in the global top 50, which the report says highlights the strength and depth of the Canadian ecosystem.
A bright spot for Canada is its top-ranked city, Toronto, which continued to climb the worldwide rankings for the fourth year in a row, moving up by one spot to 21st place. Toronto is also the fastest-growing city among Canada’s top 10, with its annual ecosystem growth eclipsing 30 percent and its total score of nearly double its runner-up, Vancouver.
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“The gap between [Toronto and Vancouver] has widened further this year, solidifying Toronto’s position in a tier of its own nationally,” the report says.
Calgary represents another point of Canadian optimism in the report, jumping a whopping 15 places globally to 92nd place, with a growth rate of 29.6 percent which nearly rivals Toronto. The gain represents a firm rebound from last year, when the city fell six points and ranked at 107th place, and the first time the city has been in the global top 100 since 2020.
While the standout Canadian cities saw great gains, others saw great losses. Vancouver and Montréal, Canada’s “second-tier cities” as the report calls them, diverged from each other this year. As Vancouver climbed up to 39th place globally, Montréal dropped to 46th, a separation fuelled by the latter’s relatively low growth rate of 13.4 percent. The nation’s capital also dropped, as Ottawa fell 19 spots in the global ranking, ultimately ending up in 86th place.
Canada’s drop in the StartupBlink’s rankings follow a troubling report from the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (CVCA) last week. The report found that the number of Canadian venture capital deals dropped to a five-year low in Q1 2025, particularly impacting seed-level investments.
Feature image courtesy Lianhao Qu via Unsplash.