Is Veganism Rising or Declining? The Honest Answer

If you've seen headlines lately saying veganism is dying, you've also probably seen headlines saying it's booming. Both camps wave statistics around, and both sound convincing. So which is it?

The honest answer: it depends what you're measuring. And once you separate the things people lump together, the picture becomes much clearer — and much more interesting than either headline suggests.

Let's go through it properly.

The confusion: veganism is not a product category

Most of the "veganism is declining" stories are based on one specific dataset: sales of plant-based meat alternatives in supermarkets. And it's true — that category has had a rough few years. According to the Good Food Institute, the non-profit that tracks this market more closely than anyone, plant-based product sales declined by around 4% in 2024, with shoppers citing high prices and heavy processing as the main reasons. Imitation meat and seafood were hit hardest — GFI data shows sales down roughly 12–13% from their 2021–22 peak — and some high-profile brands collapsed entirely.

So if your definition of veganism is "people buying fake burgers," then yes — that peaked, and it's correcting.

But that was never what veganism is. Veganism is a set of values about animals, applied to how you live — what you eat, what you wear, what you buy. And by that measure, the data tells a different story.

The people: more vegans, not fewer

The number of people identifying as vegan keeps growing. Estimates put the global vegan population at roughly 1% of the world — tens of millions of people — and rising steadily year on year.

And the commitment is sticking, not churning. Veganuary's own 2024 participant survey found that 82% of respondents planned to make significant and permanent changes to how they eat after taking part. These aren't people trying a trend for a month and abandoning it — the majority stay changed.

The regional picture matters too. Growth is uneven — search trend analysis suggests the recent global increase in interest is stronger outside the US — but in Europe, the underlying numbers are solid. According to ProVeg International, plant-based retail sales in Germany reached €1.68 billion in 2024, with both value and volume rising year on year. France grew to €537 million, and Italy reached €639 million. Even in markets where supermarket sales dipped, behaviour tells a different story: in the UK, quick-service restaurants saw orders for plant-based items rise by 56% in 2024.

Here in Portugal, the direction is the same: according to figures compiled by The Vegan Society, 10.4% of Portuguese people identified as 'veggie' in 2023 — pescatarian, vegetarian or vegan — and plant-based milk alternatives are especially popular, with a market valued at over €42 million.

So what actually declined? The first wave, not the values

What we're watching isn't the decline of veganism — it's the end of the first wave of plant-based products. The market got flooded with imitation meats that were expensive, heavily processed, and often not very good. Consumers noticed. Market analysts tracking the category describe it as moving back towards products that are plant-based in the pure sense of the word — when people switch to plant-based to be healthier and then discover the products are heavily processed, that feels like a red flag.

This is what maturing looks like. The same thing happened with organic food twenty years ago: explosive hype, correction, then steady normalisation. Tofu, legumes, plant milks — the foods people actually keep buying — are doing fine. What's struggling is the ultra-processed layer.

And here it's worth being precise about what the problem actually is — because it's not the existence of meat alternatives. Most vegans don't avoid meat because they dislike the taste. They avoid it because they refuse to kill an animal for it. The memory of flavours and textures people grew up with is real, and there's nothing wrong with wanting them. A product that delivers that experience without the animal is a genuinely good idea.

The problem is how most of these products are currently made: long ingredient lists, heavy processing, high sodium — exactly the things people are trying to move away from when they change how they eat. Consumers didn't reject the concept. They rejected the execution.

Which means the real challenge for the food industry isn't to retreat — it's to do the hard work: meat alternatives made from whole, recognisable, ideally organic ingredients, with the flavour people actually want. That's a huge technical challenge, and whoever solves it will deserve every bit of success that follows. If you read our guide on going vegan, you'll notice we said something similar: use the substitutes as a bridge, let real food be the destination. The bridge still matters — it just needs to be built better.

And what about fashion and footwear? Quietly, steadily growing

Here's the part the food-focused headlines never mention: the vegan fashion side has no decline story at all.

The global vegan fashion market — apparel, footwear, and accessories made without animal-derived materials — was valued at around $2.6 billion in 2025 and is projected to nearly double by 2034. Within the newer generation of plant-based materials, footwear is the single largest application, accounting for roughly 45% of the bio-based leather market in 2024 — and Europe holds the largest regional share, driven partly by growing demand for vegan sneakers among younger consumers.

Estimates of the total vegan leather market vary widely between research firms — depending on whether they count all synthetics or only plant-based materials — but every single one of them points the same direction: up, at growth rates between 7% and 15% a year. There is no analyst, anywhere, forecasting decline.

Why is fashion different from food? Two reasons, we think. First, there was never a "hype product" equivalent — nobody bought vegan shoes because of a viral marketing wave, so there's no bubble to deflate. Second, the materials genuinely improved. A vegan shoe in 2026 — made with Piñatex, apple leather, cork, or high-grade microfibre — is simply a better product than its equivalent ten years ago. At NAE we've watched this from the inside since 2008: the question customers ask has shifted from "is it as good as leather?" to "which of these materials do I prefer?" That's what normalisation looks like.

There's also a quieter signal worth noting: the people buying vegan shoes are no longer only vegans. Conscious consumers, people avoiding leather for environmental reasons, people who simply like the materials — the audience has widened well beyond the 1.1% who identify as vegan. That's the difference between a niche and a movement.

The honest summary

Is veganism rising or declining? Measured by the number of people living it — rising. Measured by plant-based retail across Europe — growing in most markets. Measured by vegan fashion and footwear — growing without interruption. Measured by sales of today's heavily processed meat alternatives — declining, which is less a verdict on the idea and more a message to the industry: people want these products, but made properly.