Church of England attendance has grown for a fifth year in a row, according to an early snapshot of official figures published today.
Last year, Church of England congregations were attended by an estimated 1.023 million regular worshippers. In 2019, before the outbreak of the pandemic, regular worshippers stood at 1.11 million.
It is the fifth year in a row that attendance on Sunday and across the week has risen - and the first time that the Church has enjoyed five years of unbroken growth in attendance since current records began.
These are the preliminary findings of the annual Statistics for Mission report. The full report will be published in the autumn.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, said: "It is so encouraging to see the ways that God is at work in our Church.
"With more people coming to services on Sundays and throughout the week, as well as during Advent, Christmas and Easter, it shows a yearning for meaning and connection in our often busy and fractured world.
"I give thanks for the clergy, lay people and volunteers who each week make people feel welcome in every parish across our country."
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services last year enjoyed strong attendance numbers, with 1.96 million joining in services on these days - up 5.5%. The rest of the Advent period also enjoyed a rise of 2.0 per cent to 4.8 million in attendance.
Similarly, Easter attendance rose 7.8 per cent to 1.03 million.
Weekly attendance at Church of England services saw a slight increase of 0.7 per cent on the previous year to an estimated 707,000.
This is still below the 854,000 people who attended Church of England services and acts of worship each week in October 2019, before the pandemic started. It is however a 15.5% increase on 2021 figures when the country was starting to emerge from Covid.
Average Sunday service attendance stood at 590,000 last year – up 1.6 per cent on 2024 but still below the 690,000 attending in 2019.
Debbie Clinton, the Church of England's Director for Vision and Strategy, said: “Each of these numbers represents an individual journey of faith in Christ, and we celebrate another year that shows more and more people gathering to worship in local churches, including many for the first time.
“From our rural villages to our post-industrial towns, in parishes across the country, churches are reaching out to their communities and sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ. Our 2025 statistics are a testament to their hospitality and faithfulness."
