The Future of British Sauna Belongs to the Learn-alls, not the know-alls.

When I walked around the Cornish Sauna Festival recently I had the strangest feeling of déjà vu. It felt intimate and familiar, despite not knowing a single other attendee, and it took me a while to understand why. Eventually it clicked. This is exactly what specialty coffee felt like in the UK about twelve years ago when we were building Pact Coffee.

Back then specialty coffee was a niche inside a niche inside a niche. A handful of micro roasters and independent cafés all knew one another, cared deeply and spoke passionately about extraction ratios, origin transparency and whether London should become more like Melbourne or San Francisco. There was dirt under the fingernails and blood on the knees, genuine craft and obsession from pioneers who had spent years building something few people yet understood. Alongside that integrity and energy there was also, if I am honest, a deafening echo chamber.

Walking around the festival I heard phrases like “saunas are everywhere” and “everyone I know is trying to open one” and even “saunas are mainstream now.” I heard indoor formats described as “McSaunas”, as if commercial ambition automatically corrupts the soul. I heard strong opinions about nudity, Finnish purity, spiritual practice, sports recovery, science, pseudoscience, hardship and authenticity. What I did not hear was the voice of customers, and certainly not the voice of future customers.

The energy was healthy and the discussion vibrant, which is exactly what you would hope to find in a young industry. But I was reminded of something from coffee: when operators mostly talk to one another, the horizon narrows. We begin to mistake intensity for scale and familiarity for inevitability.

This remains a nascent market. The UK sauna sector is projected to reach roughly £120 million by 2033, implying annual growth of seven or eight percent. That is strong performance for a small category, but it is still small. A niche. If the industry doubles to reach that scale, a meaningful proportion of the growth will come from people who have not yet had their first sauna.

For my part, I want this industry to grow. Not for headlines or valuation multiples, but because I have come to believe that sauna is genuinely good for people and good for society. It supports physical recovery and mental health. It creates space for stillness, reflection and shared warmth in a culture that is often hurried and transactional. It is one of the few communal experiences in Britain not organised around alcohol, business networking, childcare logistics or competitive sport.

I have had my own periods of mental strain and physical recovery over the years, and I have learned to pay attention to environments that genuinely restore rather than stimulate. Sauna is one of them. At its best it is an act of kindness, both to yourself and to those around you. When people are treated with warmth and care they tend, in my experience, to behave more warmly in return.

Growth also means more employment. Skilled hosts. Sauna masters. Craftspeople. Designers. Builders. Local suppliers. A small but meaningful ecosystem of work that is often joyful rather than extractive. That feels worth building, and entirely within reach if we approach it thoughtfully.

Some operators will choose to stay small and highly specialist. That is legitimate and, in many cases, beautiful. Intimate formats and carefully curated rituals give the industry depth. However, staying small will likely limit earning potential, and constrained earning potential can threaten long-term sustainability. It would be a shame to lose dedicated operators simply because the economics never allowed them to breathe.

The tension tends to arise when passionate operators assume the public will love what they love, in exactly the same way. Coffee offers a useful example. In 2022, Roasting Plant’s UK CEO spoke publicly about building a 200-store “British coffee empire” within five years. At the time they had five stores. Four years later, they still have five. The model centred on roasting beans fresh in every shop, sometimes serving coffee the same day it was roasted. That detail mattered enormously to them. It sounded disruptive and pure. Most customers did not value it, and many coffee purists would argue that beans benefit from seven to twelve days of degassing before they taste their best. The principle was treated as universally compelling when in reality it was niche and, in some cases, contested. When you scale around what excites you rather than what serves most people, growth has a habit of stalling.

Sauna will face similar choices. We may care deeply about birch technique, precise Finnish design principles, temperature gradients or the moral superiority of one format over another. Those things matter within the community. But we should be careful not to assume that what feels sacred to us will feel obvious to someone walking in for the first time.

We will not become Finland, where sauna is so embedded it is almost invisible. With three million saunas and five million people, it is simply part of daily life. In Britain, sauna will need to carry meaning. For one person it may represent emotional reset, for another indulgent self care, for another serious recovery or disciplined endurance. We tend to require narrative and intention.

Since starting Emberbrook and Above the Stones I have met knowledgeable and committed operators trying to predict the future based on what matters most to them personally. That instinct is understandable. But the industry’s future will be shaped less by those who know the most about sauna and more by those willing to learn the most about customers.

The pioneers deserve respect. Without them there would be no industry to grow. If we want this movement to scale in a way that preserves its integrity and avoids drifting towards purely cynical operators, we need to listen beyond ourselves. Escaping the echo chamber does not mean abandoning ritual or seriousness. It means holding convictions lightly enough to adapt in service of those we hope to serve.

I was reminded of this at a recent Soul Sweat, Breath and Sound session led by the wonderful Sam, where he invited each participant to dip a finger into the full sauna bucket and set an intention for the session, either privately or aloud. For some it was deeply moving. For others it was simply a brief prelude to the heat. It created optional depth without imposing belief and allowed different customers to experience the same space in different ways. That balance between conviction and generosity feels instructive.

There will always be prosumers who build holidays around sauna and debate stove design, airflow and birch technique late into the night. They are important cultural anchors, but they will not be the majority. If this industry is to thrive a decade from now, we must design meaningful and welcoming experiences for people who have yet to try sauna, and we must do so without losing what drew us here in the first place.

The future of British sauna belongs to operators who are confident enough to hold principles and humble enough to adapt them. That was true in coffee, and it is likely to prove true here. If we get that balance right, we have the chance to build something distinctly British, commercially resilient, culturally grounded and still full of steam and soul.