According to figures released by the Church of England at the end of July, an average of 32,600 people attended regular services in a typical week in 2025, including choral evensong, morning and evening prayer, as well as Sunday Eucharist. Adult Sunday attendance was up 8 per cent on 2024, while attendance at Christmas services rose by 6 per cent and at Easter services by 5 per cent. Easter attendance, in particular, returned to 2019 levels for the first time since the start of the pandemic, although overall numbers remain below their pre-Covid levels.
Beyond worship, cathedral buildings continued to draw a much wider public than regular churchgoers alone, attracting 9.23 million visitors over the course of the year and a further 1.83 million attendances at public and civic events, from graduation ceremonies and concerts to community initiatives held in cathedral spaces.
The civic role highlighted by the Theos report
A complementary picture emerges from “Living Stones: English Cathedrals as Sacred Spaces in Changing Times”, a report published in May by the think tank Theos and commissioned by the Association of English Cathedrals and the Church Commissioners. Based on a YouGov survey of more than 1,800 adults and a separate survey of more than 1,300 cathedral visitors, the research found that 74 per cent of adults in England had visited a cathedral at least once in the previous three years. That proportion includes a majority of people who say they have no religious affiliation. The figure corrects a typographical error in earlier versions of the report, which mistakenly gave the figure as 77 per cent before it was amended by the authors.
The report describes cathedrals as important civic and community landmarks, generating an estimated £235 million a year for their local communities, equivalent to almost €275 million at current exchange rates. This economic activity is estimated to support more than 6,000 jobs and involves around 13,000 volunteers who help with the day-to-day care of the buildings and the welcoming of visitors.
Finances under pressure, with no guaranteed public funding
Behind these signs of vitality, however, both the Theos report and cathedral bodies point to a much less secure financial position. According to Jo Kelly-Moore, Chair of the Association of English Cathedrals, almost three quarters of England’s cathedrals are currently running an operating deficit and receive no guaranteed public funding for their essential functions. The cost of maintaining buildings that are, for the most part, among the country’s most important examples of architectural heritage - often protected and requiring expensive conservation work - therefore falls almost entirely on staff and volunteers, together with the generosity of private donors and funding bodies.
Taken together, the Church of England’s statistical report and Theos’s qualitative study paint a picture of institutions that continue to attract believers and non-believers alike, while remaining financially vulnerable in the absence of long-term, systematic support from the British state.
