How many people ride, by each body's own count.

Reading these figures

The numbers below are not comparable with each other. A survey of people who rode in the past year, a federation's membership list and a register of horses each count something different, and the German FN, for one, counts club members separately from personal members. Every figure is given as the named body's own claim, with its date. Where we saw a figure only in a search summary, the page says so.

International

• FEI registrations: search summaries of the FEI's 2022 annual report give athlete registrations rising from 27,090 in 2009 to 42,352 in 2022, and horse registrations from 48,093 in 2009 to 76,803 in 2021, with France the leading nation for both. The FEI's site refused our requests, so these are unconfirmed.
• FEI competitions: the FEI Athletes Committee is reported, in a search summary of its report to the November 2024 General Assembly, to have said that almost 5,000 FEI competitions were organised in 2024, not counting the Paris Games. That is also unconfirmed.
• Member federations: 133 at the 2018 General Assembly, per the FEI release carried by US Eventing; 135 "as of 2026" per Wikipedia (secondary). The FEI page lists every count we found.
• Team jumping: HorseSport.com, reporting on the FEI Annual Report 2024, says the first Longines League of Nations in 2024 brought together the ten best national jumping teams, with a Final in Barcelona.

Great Britain

BETA is the British Equestrian Trade Association. Equestrian Trade News describes its survey as carried out every four to five years in one place, and every five years in another. A search summary of trade press says the 2019 survey had reported 1.8 million regular riders and 374,000 horse-owning households; we could not read the original, so those figures are unconfirmed.

The Pony Club

Wikipedia, a secondary source, says UK branch membership peaked at 32,435 in 2010 and was 23,126 in 2018, and that as of 2024 there were about 330 branches and 300 linked riding centres. We did not see those figures from the Pony Club itself.

The Pony Club's international reach is given three ways: Wikipedia says over thirty countries and over 100,000 members by 2008; a UK branch page is reported to say 27 countries and over 110,000 members; and Pony Club Australia is reported to say 29 countries. The last two reached us only through search summaries, without a date we could confirm.

Germany

The German FN's size depends on which source, and which kind of member, is counted:

• Wikipedia (secondary) gives 17 regional associations, about 7,600 clubs and 55,600 personal members.
• FN recruitment notices from 2025 and 2026, seen only in search summaries, give about 52,000 personal members and about 663,000 club members, and describe the FN as Germany's ninth-largest sports federation. That is the FN's own claim, and unconfirmed.
• Wikipedia also reports that in 2013 the FN issued 90,000 annual eligibility licences and 142,000 competition-horse licence updates.

United States

Wikipedia's information box gives US Equestrian about 200,000 members, undated, against over 80,000 individual members in 2001. We did not find a current figure from US Equestrian itself, so the 200,000 is unconfirmed for 2026.

The American Horse Council's 2023 National Economic Impact Study counted about 6.6 million horses in the US, against 7.2 million in 2017, and linked 2.2 million jobs to the horse industry. Those figures reached us through search summaries of the AHC and of press coverage, so they are unconfirmed. The AHC says its 2023 owner and supplier surveys ran from 3 April to 29 September 2023, and that earlier national studies were done in 1987, 1997, 2007 and 2017.

Canada

Equestrian Canada (31 July 2023) reports more than 15,000 external stakeholders, meaning licence holders, coaches, officials and organisers; about 10,000 active horse athletes; results from over 400 sanctioned competitions; and close to 2,000 certified coaches. These are Equestrian Canada's own figures.

Australia

• Pony Club Australia describes itself as the largest organisation for horse sports in Australia, with more than 750 clubs and almost 30,000 members, in a release about its AGM held on Saturday 16 May. The release is headed 19 May 2025, but the file was posted in May 2026 and 16 May fell on a Saturday in 2026, so the year is uncertain.
• Equestrian Australia's 2024-25 annual report lists about 22,881 members, according to a search summary; the report was too large for us to open, so the figure is unconfirmed.
• Equestrian Western Australia reported a record 2,727 members at the end of 2025, according to a search summary of its annual report (unconfirmed).

What is missing

We found no current FEI athlete or horse registration totals for 2024 or 2025, and no current membership figure from US Equestrian itself. The national federations page covers what each of these bodies does.