The United Kingdom and Irish Soft Contact Lens Market in 2025
Author: EUROMCONTACT a.i.s.b.l. Board
Introduction
Since 2003, EUROMCONTACT collects ‘sell in’ market data at the industry to the eye care professional level (value (€) and units) for the total soft contact lens (SCL) market, which includes Daily Disposables (DD), Weekly / Bi-Weekly & Monthly (W/B-W&M), (all clear, no colored lenses) for 32 countries. It also collects care products data (value (€) and milliliter).
About the statistics
EUROMCONTACT runs a syndicated market data collection scheme. Table 1 shows the names of the companies that participated and contributed to the data collection in 2025. The total data collection covers 32 countries, two of which are tied with another one to form two clusters (BE with LU and UK with IE). This report focuses on the UK-IE, while occasionally pointing to the total (the 30/32) or other individual countries. See table 2 of the countries markets surveyed.
Results
2025 was another good year for the UK-IE SCL markets. They grew by 3.7% to € 502 million, first time above € ½ billion. UK-IE is the largest among the countries/ clusters collected. The total 30/32 grew 6.03% to € 2,485 Million.
In UK-IE DD lenses grew by 3.9% versus prior year (vs PY) (+6.2% for the 30/32), W/W-B&M grew 2.9% vs PY in UK-IE (+5.7% for all 30/32). The value share of DD SCLs is high in UK-IE (79.4%). Here, UK-IE is among the top countries. Across all 32/34 countries the DD share is 60.75.9% and thus the W/B-W&M one is 39.25%. The leader in DD share is KW (85.9%), followed by AE (80.6%) and DK (79.3%).
The UK-IE penetration rate (number of contact lens wearers over the population of 15- 60 years of age) is 9.6% (-1.0%), which compares to 4.0% (+0.6% for all 30/32 countries/clusters).
UK-IE’s value share of Silicone Hydrogels (SiHy) among W/B-W&M CLs is high (94.9%; +1.0% vs PY). The highest across all 32 countries / 30 clusters is FI (100%, 0.51%). SiHy DD are 69.9% of DD in UK-IE, highest are RO (90.18%) and FI (86.45%).
The total contact lens care (CLC) market in UK-IE declined 7.9% to € 17.6 million. One needs to mention, however, that not all care producers / sellers are contributing to the data collection. Thus, the total value is somewhat understated. For all 30/32 countries the value is € 181 million (-0.23%).
Fig 1: Contact Lens Market (Value) Growth rates in the 11 markets assessed.
Notes
Reporting companies (in alphabetical order)
Alcon Vision Care
Avizor
Bausch & Lomb
Cooper Vision
Johnson & Johnson Vision Care
Menicon Europe
List of Markets collected (by Internet domain)
United Arab Emirates (AE)
Austria (AU)
Belgium & Luxembourg (BE-LU)
Bulgaria (BG)
Switzerland (CH)
Czech Republic (CZ)
Germany (DE)
Denmark (DK)
Egypt (EG)
Spain (ES)
Finland (FI)
France (FR)
Greece (GR)
Croatia (HR)
Hungary (HU)
Israel (IL)
Italy (IT)
Kuwait (KW)
Netherlands (NL)
Norway (NO)
Poland (PL)
Portugal (PT)
Romania (RO)
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (SA)
Sweden (SE)
Slovenia (SI)
Slovakia (SK)
Turkey (TR)
United Kingdom & Ireland (UK-IE)
South Africa (ZA)
