Report finds 1,045 digital creative firms in Ireland’s West and North-West, with jobs up 50% as industry leaders call for investment to scale growth.
A new industry report has identified 1,045 digital creative companies operating across Ireland’s West and North-West, underlining the region’s emergence as a significant hub for games, animation, screen production and creative technology.
The findings, published in a whitepaper commissioned by CREW and produced in partnership with UrbanLab at the University of Galway, were unveiled at the inaugural EDGE26 Creative Economy Summit in Galway. The study charts a decade of steady expansion across seven counties and highlights the sector’s growing contribution to regional economic development.
“For the past 10 years, the West and North-West have been building the foundations of a strong digital creative industries ecosystem”
Titled From Momentum to Scale: Digital Creative Industries in the West and North-West of Ireland: A Decade of Progress and the Path to 2036, the report tracks activity from 2016 to 2026 across Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim and Clare.
It shows that employment in selected digital creative sectors increased by more than 50% between 2019 and 2023, while the number of active enterprises rose by almost one-third over the same period. This growth reflects increased demand for digital content, advances in immersive technologies and expanding international markets.
Breadth of Western creative ecosystem
The report identifies companies spanning games development, animation, screen production, immersive technologies, digital design and wider creative technology fields, highlighting the breadth of the ecosystem now established in the region.
According to the authors, the next stage of development will depend on stronger alignment across enterprise supports, education, innovation systems and investment frameworks. The study sets out a phased roadmap for the coming decade, beginning with a “pilot and proof” phase focused on testing new approaches to finance, market development and business support.
Dr Patrick Collins of UrbanLab, who led the research, said the findings reflect a sector that has matured significantly in a relatively short period.
“The evidence shows a sector that has moved from relative invisibility to real economic significance over the past decade,” he said. “The West and North-West now has talent, infrastructure, firms and ambition. The challenge is no longer simply to prove that the sector exists. It is to build the financial, commercial and institutional conditions that allow it to grow.”
The report also highlights longstanding structural challenges, including difficulties in measuring the full scale of activity. Collins noted that traditional datasets often miss freelancers, project-based work and hybrid businesses that operate across both creative and technology domains.
“Digital creative activity is still difficult to measure properly,” he said. “Existing national datasets do not fully capture freelancers, micro-enterprises and hybrid creative-technology businesses. That matters, because if a sector is hard to see, it is harder to support, fund and scale.”
The growth described in the report has been supported by several developments over the past decade, including the establishment of CREW as a regional enterprise hub, the expansion of third-level programmes in areas such as animation and immersive technologies, and the rise of internationally focused creative firms.
Enabling scale is a priority
Niamh Costello, chief executive of CREW, said the region now has the foundations required to compete globally in digital creative industries.
“For the past 10 years, the West and North-West have been building the foundations of a strong digital creative industries ecosystem,” she said. “We now have the talent, education pathways, creative networks and a growing base of ambitious companies working across games, screen, animation, immersive technologies and digital design.”
She added that the focus must now shift towards enabling scale.
“The opportunity now is scale. The progress of the past decade demonstrates what is possible when regional ambition, talent and long-term ecosystem development come together around the digital creative industries. The next step is ensuring investment, infrastructure and policy ambition match that momentum.”
The whitepaper positions the region within a global context where digital creative industries are expanding rapidly, driven by intellectual property, artificial intelligence-enabled production and digital content consumption. It suggests Ireland can build on this trend by taking a more coordinated national approach, similar to earlier strategies that supported the growth of the technology and audiovisual sectors.
Industry stakeholders attending EDGE26 are expected to examine how greater collaboration between agencies, investors and educational institutions could support the sector’s continued expansion.
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