London, 2nd February 2026 - The European cybersecurity market delivered steady growth in 2025, expanding by 5.2% year on year, despite a challenging second half driven by weaker performance in the region’s two largest markets, according to new insights by global market intelligence firmCONTEXT.

While Q1 and Q2 showed solid momentum, growth softened in the latter part of the year. Q3 closed down 3%, followed by a further decline of 1.8% in Q4, making 2025 a clear tale of two halves for the European cybersecurity landscape.

Southern and Eastern Europe emerged as the strongest growth engines. Spain recorded a 20% increase in cybersecurity spend, Italy grew by 15%, and Poland continued its rapid expansion, up 59% year on year. By contrast, the UK market declined by 15% in Q4, while Germany fell by 7%, weighing heavily on the overall European picture due to their market size.

“Despite a subdued finish to the year, Europe’s cybersecurity market showed real resilience in 2025,” said Joe Turner, Global Director of Research at CONTEXT. “What stood out was how investment priorities shifted. Growth did not disappear, it simply moved to different countries and different security domains.”

Italy’s strong performance, combined with stagnation in both the UK and Germany, resulted in a notable milestone. Italy reached double-digit market share for the first time, ending 2025 with 10.1% of total European cybersecurity sales.

At a market segment level, network security remained the largest category, growing 7% across Europe. While Q4 was broadly flat, growth in Spain and Italy was pronounced, with increases of 34% and 26% respectively, as organisations accelerated hybrid cloud migration projects.

Infrastructure protection and identity and access management also performed well, up 10% and 9% respectively. Growth in these areas was closely linked to regulatory requirements tied to the NIS2 directive and the ongoing shift towards zero-trust security models, particularly in France, Germany, Italy and the UK.

The key performer of 2025 was data security, which grew 13% across Europe. Poland led the surge, with spending up 168%, supported by targeted funding programmes, while Germany recorded 15% growth. Investment was driven by tightening regulatory expectations around data encryption and classification, alongside the growing need to secure sensitive datasets used for AI model training.

“Data has become the foundation of both regulatory compliance and AI development,” Joe added. “As organisations invest more heavily in internal AI models, protecting the data that fuels them has become mission critical. Losing control of that data does not just create compliance risk, it undermines the value of AI investment itself.”