In 2025, Europe installed 36GWh of new battery energy storage systems, bringing total operational capacity beyond 100GWh for the first time.

SolarPower Europe, in its European Battery Market Outlook 2026-2030, reports that last year was the twelfth consecutive year of record-breaking annual additions with a growth rate rising to 48 per cent in 2025, following a slowdown in 2024.

In 2025, Europe’s three leading battery storage markets, Germany, UK, and Italy, consolidated their predominance, while Ukraine and Bulgaria emerged to complete the top five markets. Germany retained its leading position despite registering just a 2 per cent annual expansion. The UK, after a 14 per cent market decline in 2024 due to decreased grid-scale BESS revenues, bounced back to growth claiming the second position. In Italy, the distributed segment contracted again, and the utility-scale segment remained stagnant, as investors waited for the first round of the Italian auction scheme (MACSE), resulting in the overall market shrinking by 18 per cent.

Overall, the top five markets accounted for 62 per cent of all installations in Europe in 2025, while in 2024, top-tier markets delivered almost 80 per cent of yearly deployment. This underlines that that Europe’s battery storage expansion is diversifying, with a larger contribution from smaller markets.

Europe’s BESS market is also poised to enter a new phase of rapid expansion from 2026 onwards, with SolarPower Europe predicting that annual battery storage installations are expected to exceed 50GWh in 2026 for the first time, with distributed storage continuing to grow, and residential installations projected to recover momentum and reach 13.2GWh.

Beyond 2026, the market is expected to maintain a steep upward trajectory. Annual installations are projected to rise to 138GWh in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28 per cent in the period 2026-2030. By the end of the decade, annual additions would be about four times higher than in 2025, with Europe’s installed battery fleet to edge towards 600GWh by 2030.

The composition of Europe’s battery fleet is also expected to shift considerably. In 2026, utility-scale batteries are projected to become the largest segment, accounting for almost half of total installed capacity. By 2030, their predominance will strengthen further, with 392GWh deployed and a 67 per cent share of the total fleet. Residential storage, while still growing in absolute terms, is expected to lose nearly half of its 2026 market share, reaching 121GWh and 21 per cent of total capacity at the end of the decade, commercial and industrial (C&I) batteries are projected to reach 68.7GWh and more or less keep this year's share, negligibly increasing to 12 per cent.

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