We Analysed All 126,219 UK Visa Sponsors: What the Register Really Tells Graduates in 2026

The Home Office publishes a list of every organisation licensed to sponsor workers in the UK. It is updated most working days, it is free, and almost nobody reads it properly. We loaded the full register (our snapshot of 27 July 2026) into a database, cross-referenced it against 7,080 live graduate-relevant job listings from our UK job search, and pulled out the numbers international students actually need.

Everything below is reproducible from the public register, and journalists, student media and university careers teams are welcome to reuse these figures with a link to this page. Methodology and honest caveats are at the end.

The register is bigger than most students think

As of our 27 July 2026 snapshot, 126,219 distinct organisations hold a licence, and 120,957 of them (95.8%) hold it for the Skilled Worker route, the one that matters for graduate hiring. The rest cover specialist routes: Global Business Mobility transfers, ministers of religion, creative workers, sportspeople and charity workers.

Two details surprise almost everyone. First, ratings tell you nearly nothing: essentially the whole register is A-rated (only 31 organisations currently carry a B rating), so an A rating is the norm, not a mark of distinction. Second, the sheer breadth: this is not a list of famous graduate employers. It is dominated by care providers, restaurants, small consultancies and local firms that hold a licence for one or two hires.

Sponsorship is invisible in job adverts. That is the real finding

Here is the number that should change how you search. Of the 7,080 live graduate-relevant listings in our UK job search at the time of analysis, just 31 ads (0.4%) explicitly stated that the employer sponsors visas. A further 2.3% explicitly said they do not. The remaining 97.2% said nothing either way.

Now the other half of the picture: when we matched those same listings against the register by employer name, 34% were at organisations licensed to sponsor, even though almost none of them mentioned it in the ad. Because name matching is conservative (a brand name in an ad often differs from the legal name on the register), the true share is likely higher.

The practical conclusion: keyword-searching "visa sponsorship" on a job board, the method most international students rely on, structurally misses most of the opportunity. The ads that never mention visas include a large block of licensed employers. The right workflow is the reverse: find roles you want, then check the employer against the register. Our guide to where to find visa-sponsored graduate jobs covers that workflow end to end.

Where the sponsors actually are

London is registered home to 36,186 sponsors, 28.7% of the entire register and more than the next 30 towns combined. The rest of the top ten: Birmingham (3,074), Manchester (2,861), Leicester (1,411), Glasgow (1,350), Bristol (1,286), Edinburgh (1,164), Leeds (1,073), Nottingham (1,039) and Ilford (930).

But concentration is only half the geography. The register spans 8,073 distinct towns, and 80% of them have 5 or fewer licensed sponsors. If you are studying outside the big cities, the register for your town is short enough to read in full, which is a genuine advantage: you can know every licensed employer within commuting distance by name. Browse any town on our visa sponsor directory, which is built from the same register and free to use.

Why searching the raw register fails: the trading-name problem

The register lists organisations by legal name, and 8,696 of them (roughly 1 in 14) include a "T/A" trading name, like a restaurant brand trading under a holding company. Combine that with inconsistent capitalisation, stray whitespace and legal suffixes, and the practical effect is that searching the raw CSV for the brand name you saw on a job ad frequently returns nothing even when the employer is licensed.

That is not a reason to distrust the register. It is a reason to search it through something that normalises names, whether that is our directory or careful manual checking of a company's legal name on Companies House first. You can also check any single employer for free against our copy of the register.

What the register can never tell you

Three honest limits. A licence is not a vacancy: most of the 126,219 licence holders are not hiring graduates this month. A licence is not willingness: in our listings sample, 117 ads explicitly said no sponsorship even though the employer holds a licence, usually because a specific role does not meet salary thresholds or the budget does not cover visa costs. And the register carries no sector, size or contact information, so it cannot tell you whether an organisation is a 40,000-person consultancy or a two-person care agency.

Treat it as the ground truth for one question only: can this employer sponsor at all? Everything after that is ordinary job-hunt work, and for the timeline mechanics of moving from a Graduate visa to Skilled Worker sponsorship, see our Graduate visa to Skilled Worker guide.

Methodology and caveats

Register figures come from the official Home Office register of licensed sponsors (CSV), snapshot of 27 July 2026, counting distinct organisations by normalised name; multi-site organisations are counted once nationally but appear in each town they list. Town figures use the town field as published in the register. The job-ad analysis covers the 7,080 live graduate-relevant listings in Gorizzume's UK job search at the time of analysis, sourced from major UK job boards and company career sites; it is a large sample of graduate-focused hiring, not a census of every UK vacancy. "Explicitly states sponsorship" means the listing text declares it; "licensed" means the employer name matched the register after normalisation, which understates true coverage because brand and legal names differ. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place. Reuse is welcome with attribution and a link.

Frequently asked questions

How many companies sponsor visas in the UK? As of 27 July 2026, 126,219 organisations hold a UK sponsor licence, and 120,957 of them are licensed for the Skilled Worker route used for graduate hiring. Holding a licence means an employer can sponsor, not that it is currently hiring or willing to sponsor any particular role, so treat the number as the size of the possible pool, not the active one.

Why do so few job adverts mention visa sponsorship? In our analysis of 7,080 live graduate listings, 97.2% said nothing about sponsorship either way. Employers often leave it out to avoid extra applications, handle it case by case, or simply never think to state it. Since a third of those silent ads were at licensed sponsors, the absence of the phrase "visa sponsorship" in an ad tells you very little. Check the employer against the register instead.

Is London the only realistic option for sponsored graduate jobs? No. London holds 28.7% of licensed sponsors, which makes it the deepest single market, but that leaves more than 70% of sponsors elsewhere, led by Birmingham, Manchester, Leicester, Glasgow and Bristol. In smaller towns the register is short enough to read completely, which makes targeting licensed employers easier, not harder.

How do I check if a specific company is a licensed sponsor? Search the official register on gov.uk, bearing in mind that 8,696 entries hide behind trading names and companies appear under legal names rather than brands. Or use a normalised search layer built on the register, such as our free visa sponsor directory or our single-employer sponsor licence checker, and confirm the specific role's sponsorship position directly with the employer before you invest in the application.

About the author

Hamid Gondal is a co-founder of Gorizzume and its Head of Careers and Employability. A former engineering student, he has spent more than four years as a careers consultant supporting students and graduates through the UK job market: job applications and interviews, finding licensed visa sponsors, CVs and cover letters, and securing work experience and placements. He writes about how UK graduate hiring and the sponsorship system actually work in practice.