Bubbling Under, Moving Forward: What the PR Week Top 150 Really Tells us About Orchard

The PR Week Top 150 has always been more than a league table. It’s a snapshot of an industry under pressure, adapting in real time. The 2026 report confirms what many agency leaders already felt through 2025: this was a year of running hard just to stand still.

Against that backdrop, Orchard, the only Channel Island agency in the list that we can see, is moving up to 185, from 199 last year, feels quietly significant. Once again, we appear in PR Week’s Bubbling Under section – a space we’ve occupied for several years – but the direction of travel matters. Progress, in a constrained market, rarely arrives in dramatic leaps.

A Market Growing

At headline level, the industry appears to have edged forward. Aggregate revenue across the Top 150 rose 3.7 per cent in 2025, reaching £1.99bn. But once inflation is factored in, the picture sharpens: real growth was just 0.3 per cent, down from 0.6 per cent the year before.

In other words, much of the industry was effectively standing still.

Almost as many agencies saw revenue decline in 2025 as in 2024, while profitability remained under strain. Rising employment costs, wage inflation and continued investment in AI all squeezed margins. Headcount across the Top 150 was virtually flat, and more agencies made redundancies than the year before.

In that context, Orchard holding revenue position is not a defensive footnote – it’s a positive outcome. Stability has become a marker of discipline and relevance, not conservatism.

The Value of Resilience Over Scale

One of the most telling signals in this year’s report is the lowering of the revenue threshold to enter the Top 150, which dipped below £2m for the first time since 2020. That speaks volumes about pressure at the smaller and mid-sized end of the market.

PR Week’s analysis also shows that mid-sized agencies outperformed the largest firms on average, while the smallest grew fastest of all. The takeaway is clear: agility, focus and specialism are increasingly rewarded.

That aligns with Orchard’s own experience. We’ve prioritising depth over breadth, long-term client relationships over short-term spikes, and senior counsel over inflated scale. In a year where many agencies invested heavily just to protect position, steady performance is itself a competitive advantage.

A Cautious 2026

If 2025 was tough, PR Week’s report makes clear that 2026 remains uncertain. Briefs are taking longer to convert, budgets are under closer scrutiny and clients continue to demand “more for less”. The shift towards project-based work, alongside increased in-housing and experimentation with AI, adds further complexity.

While more than nine in ten agencies report confidence that 2026 will be a better trading year, that optimism is cautious. Many leaders acknowledge the market remains fragile, with geopolitical instability and creeping inflation never far from decision-making.

Still Bubbling – and Building

Being Bubbling Under isn’t about hovering on the edges. It’s about consistency in an industry where volatility has become normal.

Moving from 199 to 185 won’t transform Orchard overnight. But it does reinforce something we believe strongly: that in uncertain times, clients value clarity, insight, experience and commercial realism.

We’re still bubbling. And in this market, that feels like a good place to be.