A section with key insights from State of Pet Adoption Platform Insights 2026
4. Who is doing adoptions in 2026?
What last year's report found
The 2025 report found a continuing shift in who lists pets. NFP Shelters and Councils listed more animals than in previous years, while Rescues stayed level, for the third year in a row operating at or beyond their capacity.
What happened this year
PetRescue's members work at very different scales. Some list hundreds of pets a year; others list a handful. In 2025–26, 568 member organisations listed at least one pet.
The table shows both the median and the average number of pets each organisation listed. The median is the organisation in the middle; the average is the total divided by the number of organisations. For NFP Shelters these are very different (5 compared with 446), because a small number of very large shelters list most of the animals, while many smaller shelters list only a few.
⚪ NFP Shelters listed 3,760 fewer pets than the year before, a fall of 13.9%. Part of this is fewer shelters listing, and part is each shelter listing fewer animals: 446 each on average, down from 490.
⚪ Councils listed almost exactly the same number: 8,281 last year and 8,274 this year.
⚪ Rescues listed 3.4% fewer animals, and adopted out 1.0% fewer (31,607 → 31,283). Some of this year's Rescue adoptions were animals listed in earlier years. That fits Section 3: Rescues are still finding homes, but for animals who have waited longer, which uses up more days of care.
Jump to specific insights from the report: