The Creative Economy by Region: Where Asia, Europe, the Americas, Africa and the Gulf Stand

The creative economy by region is a story of specialisation: Asia manufactures and increasingly exports content, Europe and North America sell high-value services and hold most of the subsidy and royalty income, and Africa, Latin America and the Gulf are trying to convert cultural wealth into measured economic output. In this guide the Kurums Startup team compares the five regions on output, trade, employment and public funding using UNCTAD, UNESCO, Eurostat, national statistics offices and the February 2026 FTI Consulting–World Governments Summit Creative Futures report. It belongs to the Arts & Creative Economy hub and builds on our baseline article, how big is the global creative economy; the Gulf creative economy strategy piece covers the newest region in depth.

How is the creative economy distributed across regions?

Roughly a third each in Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America by revenue, with Latin America around 6% and Africa and the Middle East around 3%, on the only global regional breakdown available (EY for CISAC). The trade and employment data since then show Asia gaining share in goods and content exports while Europe keeps its lead in services and royalties.

EY’s 2015 study for CISAC allocated 34% of global creative revenue to Asia-Pacific, 32% to Europe, 28% to North America, 6% to Latin America and 3% to Africa and the Middle East; employment was 40%, 25%, 15%, 16% and 8% respectively. The gap between revenue and job shares is a productivity gap: a creative job in Europe or North America produces two to three times the revenue of one in Latin America or Africa.

UNCTAD’s Creative Economy Outlook 2024 gives the most recent hard numbers, for trade in 2022. Asia exported $438 billion of creative goods (61% of the world total) and $359 billion of creative services (26%); Europe $211 billion of goods (30%) and $720 billion of services (52%); Northern America $51 billion of goods (7%) and $274 billion of services (20%); Latin America and the Caribbean $8 billion of goods and $14 billion of services (about 1% each); and Africa $2.4 billion of goods and $4 billion of services (about 0.3% each). Developing economies as a group supplied 59% of creative goods but only 20% of creative services.

Why does Asia dominate creative goods and content exports?

Because China manufactures most of the world’s design-intensive goods (jewellery, toys, fashion accessories, interior products) and because South Korea, Japan and increasingly India and Indonesia have built content industries that export at scale. China alone shipped $250 billion of creative goods in 2022, 35% of the world total.

China’s domestic creative economy is now very large. The National Bureau of Statistics reported that culture and related industries generated 20.8 trillion yuan (about $2.9 trillion) of business revenue in 2025, up 8.8%, with services at 12.3 trillion yuan (+12.8%) and “new-format” digital cultural industries such as streaming, games, online literature and digital design at 7.67 trillion yuan, 36.8% of revenue and almost 60% of growth. The concentration is extreme: 79.7% of large-enterprise revenue came from the eastern coastal provinces, 11.2% from the centre and 8.2% from the west. Our article on national film industries covers China’s box office.

South Korea is the export model. Content industry sales reached 157.4 trillion won (about $107 billion) in 2024 and exports a record $14.08 billion, with games at $8.5 billion (60% of exports), music $1.8 billion and broadcasting $1.26 billion, giving a content trade surplus of $13.16 billion; provisional 2025 exports were $14.9 billion. Oxford Economics’ April 2026 study for the MPA put the screen industry’s GDP contribution at 24.08 trillion won ($17.1 billion) and 291,100 jobs, with film and TV exports of 1.8 trillion won in 2024, nearly double 2019. The culture ministry has raised its 2030 K-culture market target from 300 to 400 trillion won.

India and Indonesia are the growth frontier. PwC’s Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2025–2029 expects both to grow faster than 7.5% a year, with Indian internet advertising at 15.9%; YouTube alone paid close to $2.8 billion to Indian creators in 2024. India hosted its first WAVES summit in May 2025 to position its “orange economy” as an export sector, and it exported $21 billion of creative goods in 2022. Digital royalties were 82.7% of collections in India and 82.5% in Indonesia in 2024, against 27.1% in the US and 11.4% in the UK (CISAC).

What makes Europe the creative services leader?

Europe exported $720 billion of creative services in 2022, more than half the world total, because its software, architecture, advertising, publishing and audiovisual firms sell globally and because Ireland hosts the European licensing hubs of the largest US technology and media companies ($231 billion of creative services exports).

Within the EU, Eurostat counted 8.9 million people in cultural employment in 2025, 4.3% of all jobs, and about 2.03 million cultural enterprises in 2022 generating €199 billion of value added and €503 billion of turnover; Germany (26.4%), France (17.4%) and Italy (11.5%) produce 55% of that value added. The broader EY/GESAC measure put the sector at 4.4% of EU GDP in 2019. Cultural employment share runs from 5.7% in the Netherlands to 1.8% in Romania.

The United Kingdom, outside the EU, is Europe’s largest single creative economy on the broad definition: £145.8 billion of GVA in 2024 (5.5% of UK GVA, up 4.6% in real terms against 1.0% for the economy), 2.46 million jobs, $87 billion of creative services exports in 2022 and 269,655 creative businesses. France and Italy lead Europe in creative goods exports ($30 billion and $39 billion) on the strength of fashion, design and luxury, which our France and Italy cultural economy model article explores.

How large is the creative economy in the Americas?

The United States is the world’s largest single creative economy, with $1.17 trillion of arts and cultural production in 2023 (4.2% of GDP, up 6.6% in real terms), 5.4 million wage-and-salary jobs and $244 billion of creative services exports, the most of any country. Latin America, by contrast, holds about 1% of creative trade.

The BEA’s satellite account shows where US value sits: supporting industries (broadcasting, publishing, information services, retail) contributed $873.8 billion and core industries (performing arts, museums, design, education) $265.8 billion. Americans for the Arts’ AEP6 study adds the nonprofit layer: $151.7 billion of economic activity, 2.6 million jobs and $29.1 billion of tax revenue in fiscal 2022, with audiences spending $78.4 billion beyond admissions.

Latin America is the clearest case of cultural weight outrunning economic measurement. The region produces globally successful music (reggaeton, regional Mexican), telenovelas and film, yet exported only $8 billion of creative goods and $14 billion of creative services in 2022, and its royalty collections fell 0.6% to €786 million in 2024. National “economía naranja” strategies in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia and the spread of streaming are formalising revenue, but the region’s share of creative trade is close to its 2015 level.

Where do Africa and the Middle East stand?

Africa’s creative economy is large in people and small in measured money: EY allocated 8% of global creative jobs to Africa and the Middle East but 3% of revenue, and UNCTAD’s 2022 data shows Africa at 0.3% of creative goods and services exports. The Gulf states are the exception, investing heavily to build measured creative sectors from a low base.

Nigeria illustrates the measurement gap. Its creative economy was estimated at $5.6 billion in 2022, with visual media (Nollywood) around $2.7 billion, music $1.4 billion and fashion $600 million, and the federal government targets $100 billion a year and two million jobs. Yet motion pictures and music recording together accounted for only about 154 billion naira (under $200 million) of GDP in 2023 in the official accounts. Informal distribution and platform-held revenue keep most Nollywood and Afrobeats income outside the statistics. African royalty collections grew 14.2% in 2024 to €90 million, and

UNESCO’s 2025 report puts the structural cause in one number: public spending on culture is $1.10 per person a year in sub-Saharan Africa against $418.56 in Europe and North America, so the sector grows through private and platform channels, which is faster but harder to count. The inaugural Creative Futures Africa Summit in Johannesburg in October 2025 was set up to feed recommendations on this into the G20.

The Gulf is moving in the opposite direction, from oil revenue into culture. Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture, created in 2018, reports sector employment up 318% since then and a target of 3% of GDP, about SR180 billion ($48 billion), by 2030, up from a share just under 1%; the Red Sea Film Festival, the Islamic Arts Biennale and the Cultural Development Fund are the visible instruments. The UAE already exports $17 billion of creative goods, putting it in UNCTAD’s global top ten through Dubai’s jewellery and design trade, and hosted the launch of the Creative Futures report in February 2026. PwC expects Saudi entertainment and media to grow above 7.5% a year to 2029.

Where does Türkiye fit between Europe and Asia?

Türkiye is a mid-sized creative economy with an outsized export niche. TÜİK’s Kültür Ekonomisi 2024 release puts culture expenditure at 408.3 billion lira (0.9% of GDP) and cultural employment at 957,000 people (2.9% of jobs, up 6.5%), while UNCTAD’s 2022 tables record about $15.9 billion of creative goods exports, close to the UK and the UAE.

The goods figure reflects Istanbul’s jewellery, textiles, furniture and design manufacturing, which places Türkiye in the Asian pattern of design-intensive goods rather than the European pattern of services. The services export story is television: Turkish series earned more than $500 million abroad in 2024 and reach over 150 countries, with roughly a billion viewers by Anadolu Agency’s estimate, making Türkiye the second-largest scripted-drama exporter after the United States by volume. Public culture spending at 200.4 billion lira in 2024 is high by emerging-market standards but low per head compared with the EU, and the cultural employment share of 2.9% sits below the EU’s 4.3% while growing faster. The full picture is in our Türkiye creative economy playbook.

What should investors and policymakers take from the regional picture?

Three things: growth is in Asia and the Gulf, margin is in Europe and North America, and the biggest untapped opportunity is formalising Africa’s and Latin America’s existing creative output. Each calls for a different strategy.

For investors, Asian content and platform markets offer the growth (China 8.8%, Korean exports 5–6% a year, India and Indonesia above 7.5%), with access as the constraint. Europe and North America offer lower growth but the deepest pools of intellectual property, royalty income and public co-funding, which is why most creative M&A and the entire art market, covered in our global art market article, remain concentrated there.

For policymakers in emerging markets, the Creative Futures report’s four levers (whole-of-government creative units, blended finance and guarantees, creativity in education, exports and soft power) are the consensus playbook, and Saudi Arabia, the UAE, India and Nigeria are all applying versions of it. The evidence from Korea is that the export lever works but takes decades; the evidence from Africa is that measurement must come first, because a sector that is 0.3% of trade in the statistics and 8% of jobs in reality cannot attract finance at its true scale. Our 2030 forecast sets out how the regional balance may shift.

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