Florida Business Formations Grew 2% in July 2026
Florida registered 59,494 new business entities in July 2026, up 2.0% from 58,315 in July 2025. That is the weakest year-over-year July since the 2022 contraction, and it lands after six straight months of growth between 6% and 17%. Strip out a single county and the state did not grow at all: the other 66 counties filed 53,694 formations against 53,779 a year earlier, a decline of 0.2%.
Florida formed 59,494 new entities in July 2026, a 2.0% year-over-year gain and the slowest month of 2026. Pinellas County supplied more of the increase than the state gained in total. New domestic corporations fell 12.0%.
Key findings
- Growth fell from 16.5% to 2.0% in four months. March 2026 ran 16.5% ahead of March 2025. July ran 2.0% ahead. Every month in between stepped down.
- Florida outside Pinellas County shrank. Pinellas added 1,264 formations year over year. The entire state added 1,179. The remaining 66 counties, taken together, filed 85 fewer.
- Miami-Dade lost 620 formations, down 5.3%. Hillsborough fell 6.0%. Broward, Duval, Lee, Sarasota, Volusia, Collier, Seminole, and St. Johns all came in at or below last July.
- New domestic corporations fell 12.0%, from 5,412 to 4,760, extending a decline that has now run for four consecutive years.
How many businesses formed in Florida in July 2026?
Florida recorded 59,494 new corporate entities between July 1 and July 31, 2026. July 2025 produced 58,315. The gain is 1,179 filings, or 2.0%.
Read against the rest of the year that number is the story. Florida spent the first half of 2026 growing at roughly 10%, with a 16.5% peak in March. Then the gap closed. Each month since March has added less than the one before it, and July nearly closed it entirely.
| Month | 2025 | 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 59,481 | 63,088 | +6.1% |
| February | 56,650 | 60,229 | +6.3% |
| March | 61,169 | 71,284 | +16.5% |
| April | 60,141 | 68,566 | +14.0% |
| May | 58,717 | 64,596 | +10.0% |
| June | 56,332 | 62,277 | +10.6% |
| July | 58,315 | 59,494 | +2.0% |
| January to July | 410,805 | 449,534 | +9.4% |
July is a slow month in Florida every year, so the raw 59,494 is not the signal. The comparison against the same month last year is, and by that measure this is the flattest reading in four years. July grew 9.7% in 2023, 6.5% in 2024, and 10.2% in 2025.
Where did the growth actually come from?
One county. Pinellas filed 5,800 formations in July 2026 against 4,536 in July 2025, an increase of 1,264. Florida as a whole increased by 1,179. The county's gain is larger than the state's.
Run the arithmetic the other way and it is starker. Take Pinellas out and Florida filed 53,694 formations in July 2026 against 53,779 in July 2025. That is 85 fewer entities, a decline of 0.2%. On the strength of the other 66 counties, Florida's formation growth in July was zero.
Pinellas has been the outlier all year, and the reason is a mailing address rather than a business boom. Filings naming Northwest Registered Agent LLC in Pinellas rose from 1,281 to 2,337, an increase of 1,056. That single agent name accounts for 84% of the county's entire year-over-year gain. Statewide, filings naming the same agent rose from 1,748 to 3,138, an increase of 1,390, which by itself exceeds the 1,179 the whole state added. We traced the address behind this pattern in the St. Petersburg address that registered 21,984 companies.
An agent's registered address is where legal service is accepted. It is not where the business operates, and it does not have to be in the same county or even the same state. When a formation service grows its book, the county holding its mailroom books the filings.
| Grouping | July 2025 | July 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Florida, all 67 counties | 58,315 | 59,494 | +2.0% |
| Pinellas County | 4,536 | 5,800 | +27.9% |
| Florida excluding Pinellas | 53,779 | 53,694 | −0.2% |
Which Florida counties lost ground in July?
Miami-Dade, the largest market in the state, filed 11,002 formations against 11,622 a year earlier. That is 620 fewer entities and a 5.3% decline. Hillsborough fell 6.0%, from 3,733 to 3,510. Sarasota fell 4.3%, Seminole 2.8%, Collier 2.8%, Volusia 2.2%, St. Johns 1.5%, Lee 1.2%, Duval 0.7%, and Broward finished level at 5,822 against 5,831.
The counties that did grow are mostly mid-sized and inland. Alachua rose 17.7%, Brevard 12.8%, Pasco 7.4%, Polk 6.7%, Manatee 6.6%, and St. Lucie 5.8%. These are the same interior and northeast markets that outgrew the southeast in the first half of the year, and they are still doing it, just no longer fast enough to carry the state.
| County | July 2025 | July 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Miami-Dade | 11,622 | 11,002 | −5.3% |
| Broward | 5,831 | 5,822 | −0.2% |
| Pinellas | 4,536 | 5,800 | +27.9% |
| Palm Beach | 3,999 | 4,127 | +3.2% |
| Orange | 4,060 | 4,105 | +1.1% |
| Hillsborough | 3,733 | 3,510 | −6.0% |
| Duval | 1,950 | 1,937 | −0.7% |
| Lee | 1,763 | 1,741 | −1.2% |
| Polk | 1,533 | 1,636 | +6.7% |
| Pasco | 1,133 | 1,217 | +7.4% |
| Brevard | 973 | 1,098 | +12.8% |
| Sarasota | 1,007 | 964 | −4.3% |
| Alachua | 368 | 433 | +17.7% |
Which entity types drove the slowdown?
LLCs held up better than everything else. Florida LLC registrations rose from 49,420 to 51,069, a gain of 3.3%, and took 85.8% of all new July filings. New domestic profit corporations fell from 5,412 to 4,760, down 12.0%, and now account for 8.0% of formations against 9.3% a year ago.
Foreign LLCs, meaning entities formed elsewhere that register to operate in Florida, rose 7.7% to 1,525. Nonprofits were flat at 1,452. The inbound signal is still positive even as domestic formation flattens, which is a different pattern from a broad slowdown and worth watching over the next few months.
| Entity type | July 2025 | July 2026 | Change | 2026 share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Florida LLC (FLAL) | 49,420 | 51,069 | +3.3% | 85.8% |
| Domestic Corporation (DOMP) | 5,412 | 4,760 | −12.0% | 8.0% |
| Foreign LLC (FORL) | 1,416 | 1,525 | +7.7% | 2.6% |
| Domestic Nonprofit (DOMNP) | 1,440 | 1,452 | +0.8% | 2.4% |
| Foreign Corporation (FORP) | 528 | 554 | +4.9% | 0.9% |
| Other (LP, foreign LP, foreign nonprofit, trust) | 99 | 134 | +35.4% | 0.2% |
The corporation's decline is not a July event. New Florida corporations have fallen every year since 2021, and the share they hold of all new filings has dropped by two thirds since 2015. We tracked that whole arc in a decade of Florida entity choice.
Did closures rise as formations flattened?
No, and this is the part that argues against reading July as a downturn. Florida recorded 13,618 corporate events in July 2026, the category that carries dissolutions, reinstatements, name changes, and registered agent changes. July 2025 produced 16,914 and July 2024 produced 17,349. Event volume fell 19.5% year over year.
A genuine contraction usually shows up as formations falling and dissolutions rising at the same time. Here both sides of the ledger are quieter. That reads more like a slower month of filing activity overall than like businesses closing. The dissolution side has its own strong seasonal shape, concentrated in April, which we covered in Florida's April dissolution wave.
What should you take from a single flat month?
Not a recession call. One month is one month, July is seasonally quiet, and the 2026 comparison is running against a strong 2025 base. Through seven months Florida is still 9.4% ahead of last year at 449,534 formations against 410,805.
What is worth carrying forward is the shape. The year-over-year gap has narrowed every month since March without a single reversal, and July's figure only stayed positive because of filings routed through one county's registered agent addresses. Those are two different things to watch, and the second one means county-level formation counts should be read with the agent concentration in mind rather than as a direct measure of local business activity.
About these numbers
Figures come from Florida Division of Corporations filings as republished in the sneyk dataset, covering July 1 through July 31, 2026, and the matching windows in prior years. Counts were taken on August 13, 2026.
Three adjustments matter for anyone reproducing this. Counts are distinct corporations rather than filing rows, because the state's daily files overlap and some records repeat. Filings carrying a January 1 date are excluded from monthly figures, since that date serves as a year-known, day-unknown placeholder rather than a real filing day. County figures use the ZIP-derived county of the filing address, so an entity is counted where its filed address sits, which for many filings is a registered agent's office.
The reporting window stops at July 31 because Florida publishes formations on a lag. Counts for a week that just ended are substantially incomplete and keep climbing for about two weeks. July was settled at the time of measurement; August figures are not reported here for that reason. We explain the effect, with the live August numbers, in why new business counts look low at first.
County-level data for all 67 counties is at sneyk.com/counties.