How Many Airsoft Sites Are There in the UK? (2026)

How many airsoft sites are there in the UK? On 5 October 2026, we listed 312: 231 in England, 23 in Scotland, 21 in Wales and 18 in Northern Ireland. The UKARA register listed 177 sites on that date, and the BAC register 114. We check both registers every week. This is the first edition of what will be an annual count.

This piece covers how the 312 figure is built, how sites break down by region, what the UKARA and BAC registers show, six weeks of register data, what we cannot measure yet, and how the count is done.

How many airsoft sites are there in the UK?

The headline figure is 312 live listings on 5 October 2026. That is the count of published, active fields on the Airsoft Fields directory.

Alongside those, 18 listings are pending review - mostly register entries that could not be matched confidently to an existing listing, some of which have waited since August. A further 22 are retired. Of the 22, 21 were confirmed closed in our August 2026 audit: their websites' domains no longer resolve. The remaining one was retired on 23 September at the owner's request after it turned out to be a duplicate.

A listed site is not the same as a trading site. A listing means a field is on the UKARA or BAC register, or has been added by hand - it does not confirm the site is open on any given day. An unlisted site may still be running. The directory is a starting point; booking pages and direct contact confirm availability.

Sites by nation and region

England accounts for 231 of the 312 live listings. The South West has the most sites of any English region at 43. London and the North East each have 9, the fewest of any English region.

The 19 listings in the "Location not recorded" row have no postcode or coordinates in the directory yet. They do not appear in postcode or city search as a result. Browse fields by city or search by postcode on the Airsoft Fields homepage to find sites near you.

Regions follow ONS English region boundaries and the four nations. Postcodes were mapped using postcodes.io, with coordinates used as a fallback where the postcode lookup failed.

UKARA and BAC: the two registers

Two registers cover accredited airsoft sites in the UK: UKARA and BAC. Our UKARA guide explains what UKARA is and how a player qualifies through a registered site.

On 5 October 2026, the UKARA register listed 177 sites and the BAC register 114. Of the 312 live directory listings, 167 carry a UKARA link and 92 carry a BAC link.

The gap between 177 and 167 on UKARA is not a list of 10 sites we are missing. On 5 October, 28 UKARA entries could not be matched confidently - no postcode, or a name too short to resolve without manual review. BAC has a similar backlog: 12 entries are flagged for review and 11 are marked ambiguous. Matching register entries to directory listings is an ongoing process, and the numbers will shift as it continues.

Why the registers matter when buying a realistic imitation firearm is covered in our article on airsoft law in the UK.

A more detailed comparison of what UKARA and BAC each require of sites is planned for later this year.

Is airsoft growing or dying?

Six weeks of weekly data cannot answer that. What the data shows is how the UKARA register moved between 24 August and 5 October 2026.

UKARA started at 169 sites on 24 August and stood at 177 on 5 October. Week by week: 169, 170, 174, 174, 173, 175, 177. The BAC register stayed at 114 every week without change.

UKARA is a live list. Sites drop off when a registration lapses and return when it is renewed. The register does not record why a site left: a lapsed form looks the same as a pause or a closure. A drop-off is not a closure.

Separately, our August 2026 audit confirmed 21 listed sites closed, because their websites' domains no longer resolve. Those are retired in the directory. That count comes from checking each site's domain, not from register status. The two figures measure different things.

Six weeks is not long enough to say anything about direction. We will have a clearer picture - and the first year-on-year comparison - in January.

What we can't count yet

Site type. None of the 312 listings carries a game-type tag, so there is no count of woodland sites, CQB arenas or milsim venues. Our guide to CQB vs woodland airsoft explains the differences, but the directory cannot yet filter by game type.

Sites on neither register. Some fields are added to the directory by hand or at the owner's request, not through a register scrape. How many active sites exist that are on no register and have no listing is not something we can measure from here.

Why a site leaves a register. The register shows whether a site is present or not. It does not record the reason for a departure.

If you run a site and want to claim your listing or correct your details, get in touch.

How we count

The 312 live listing count comes from the Airsoft Fields directory on 5 October 2026.

UKARA and BAC register counts come from weekly automated scrapes, run every Monday at 01:00 since 24 August 2026. There have been 14 scrapes in total - 7 per register - and every one completed without error. The 24 August scrape is the baseline for the register counts; the churn figures in the table above cover only the 6 scrapes from 31 August to 5 October, which is when the register moved as a live list rather than as an import.

Most of the 18 pending listings are register entries that arrived via a scrape but could not be matched to an existing field automatically. They are held for manual review before going live.

Postcodes were mapped to nation and English region using postcodes.io with ONS region boundaries. Where a postcode lookup failed, coordinates were used as a fallback. Nineteen listings had neither, which is why they appear in the "Location not recorded" row.

"Live" means a published, active listing on the directory. "Pending" means a register entry or submitted site awaiting review. "Retired" means a listing removed from public view.

Find a site

Search by postcode on the Airsoft Fields homepage to find fields near you, or browse airsoft fields by city. If you are new to the sport, our guide covers what airsoft is and how a game day runs.

Sources. Directory data from airsoft-fields.com, 5 October 2026. Register data from UKARA (ukara.org.uk) and BAC (britishairsoftclub.com), scraped weekly since 24 August 2026. Postcode-to-region mapping: postcodes.io with ONS English region boundaries.