Guidance

Community and Engagement Survey 2025/26

The findings of the Community and Engagement Survey in 2025/26.

• From: Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
• Published: 31 July 2026

Applies to England

The Community and Engagement Survey (CES) is a continuous push to web survey of people aged 16 and over in England, designed to explore how people across England engage with their community and with culture, media and live sport and allows respondents’ views to be heard on a range of issues affecting their local area. In October 2025, the Community and Engagement Survey replaced DCMS’ Participation Survey and Community Life Survey.

• Released: 31 July 2026.
• Period covered: October 2025 to March 2026 (some engagement data included in this release was collected between April 2025 and September 2025 through the Participation Survey).
• Geographic coverage: National, regional and local authority level data for England.
• Next release date: September 2026 (quarterly data covering April to June 2026)

Summary Report

We have published a summary report outlining the headline findings from this publication.

For detailed statistics with full demographic and geographic breakdowns for the topics covered in this survey, please follow the links below.

Topic reports providing commentary on the findings, including demographic and geographic breakdowns, will be published on their relevant topic pages on 14 August 2026.

We published all of this data in tables on 31 July 2026.

Community Pathway Topics

• Civic Engagement
• Influencing Local Decisions
• Loneliness
• Neighbourhood and Community
• Pride in Local Area
• Support Networks
• Volunteering and Charitable Giving

Engagement Pathway Topics

• Archives
• Arts
• Heritage
• Libraries
• Museums and Galleries
• Live Sport and Gambling
• Domestic Tourism
• Major Events

Supplementary documents

Alongside these statistics and reports, we have published supplementary documents, including guidance to interpretation of these statistics, the pre-release access document and the technical report.

Additional Information

The Community and Engagement Survey is asked of people aged 16 and over in England. Currently there is no harmonised survey or set of questions within the devolved administrations of the UK. Data on many areas of the Community and Engagement Survey are available in the Scottish Household Survey, National Survey for Wales and Northern Ireland Continuous Household Survey.

The pre-release access document above contains a list of ministers and officials who have received privileged early access to this release of Community and Engagement Survey data. In line with best practice, the list has been kept to a minimum and those given access for briefing purposes had a maximum of 24 hours. Details on the pre-release access arrangements for this dataset are available on the supplementary documents page.

Our statistical practice is regulated by the OSR. OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

You are welcome to contact us directly with any comments about how we meet these standards by emailing evidence@dcms.gov.uk. Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing regulation@statistics.gov.uk or via the OSR website.

The responsible analyst for this release is Dea Begaj. For enquiries on this release, contact cesurvey@dcms.gov.uk

Published 31 July 2026