Filming in Edinburgh & SE Scotland 2025

Film Edinburgh recorded a 20% uplift in the amount of filming in Edinburgh and south east Scotland in 2025

Paper first published in the Business Bulletin for the City of Edinburgh Council's Culture and Wellbeing Committee, May 2026

Film Edinburgh, the City of Edinburgh Council’s film office, promotes and facilitates filming in the City of Edinburgh and provides a film office service for our partner local authorities in East Lothian and the Scottish Borders. As such, Film Edinburgh has been tracking the ebbs and flows of filming across the south east of Scotland for the past 20+ years. In September 2025, Midlothian Council commissioned Film Edinburgh to provide its film office service which will extend reporting from 2026 onwards.

Film Edinburgh recorded an increase in the number of feature films, TV dramas, factual and entertainment TV shows and adverts filming in public and private locations across the region in 2025, with 253 productions across the region in 2025 compared to 210 productions in 2024. However, the number of days of filming fell to 536 in 2025 from 586 in 2024, with the consequence of direct spend from productions in 2025 being lower in 2025 than in 2024 at £8.5M spend in 2025 versus £23.2M in 2024.

In the City of Edinburgh, the number of filmed productions increased to 231 in 2025 from 186 in 2024. There were 470.5 filming days in Edinburgh in 2025 versus 441 in 2024. Direct spend from filming in the City of Edinburgh fell to £6.8M in 2025 compared to £18.8M in 2024. Revenue to the City of Edinburgh Council from film productions (location fees and service charges) amounted to £150,050 in 2025 compared to £206,245 in 2024.

Feature film highlights included:

TV drama highlights included scenes for:

Factual (including factual entertainment) highlights included:

It is not unusual for film production to ebb and flow, as is evident in the statistics over the past 30 years (see Tables 1 -4). What is most prominent in the statistics is the impact of high-end TV drama and feature films on the direct spend figures. These types of drama productions hire upwards of 150 production crew for several months at a time, compared to a documentary crew which may need only 5-10 crew, or commercials with 20-40 crew. The decline in direct spend in Edinburgh in 2025 was as a result of high-end film and TV drama productions coming to the city and region only for a few days of location filming rather than choosing to base their productions in the region. It is reported that the streaming services (e.g. Amazon, Netflix, Apple) reduced commissions of scripted TV shows in the first half of 2025 while they reassessed strategies and that production budgets tightened , but we anticipate a busier year for production in the city in 2026.

Direct spend is the amount of money a production spends directly in the area and does not include GVA or other multipliers. Figures are provided by production companies or, where productions have not provided data, estimates derived from the average local production spend rate card published by Creative England and the British Film Institute (Olsberg SPI) .

Film Edinburgh’s production guide recorded 430 residents working as freelance production crew across genres in 2025, 133 local companies providing services to the film and television sector, and a further 56 production companies based in the area creating commercial content for clients around the world. Film Edinburgh continued to raise awareness of careers in the screen industries to young people through its ‘inspire’ programme in Edinburgh’s high schools which has been running for 3 years and is delivered by Screen Education Edinburgh.