Northern Thailand: 170,661 Companies by Province 2026

Seventeen provinces make up the North, and together they hold 170,661 registered companies as of 2 July 2026 (DBD, 2026). Set against the national register of 1,989,709 companies, that works out to 8.6 percent. On revenue the region is lighter still. Northern companies book 2.00 trillion baht of turnover, which is 2.6 percent of the national total of 76.62 trillion. The gap between the two shares tells you something: the North holds more companies than revenue, so the businesses here run smaller on average than the national firm. And the region does not spread evenly. Chiang Mai alone registers 65,164 companies, or 38.2 percent of every company in the North. Add Chiang Rai at 18,652 and two provinces account for close to half the region. Everything below the top two thins out fast.

A region that runs on one city is a fragile region. The top six provinces hold 123,694 companies between them, which is 72.5 percent of the North. The remaining eleven provinces divide the last 46,967 companies, an average near 4,300 each. Chiang Mai is not just the largest node, it is the market. Its 65,164 companies produce 527 billion baht of revenue, more than a quarter of everything the region turns over. Chiang Rai, the runner-up, books 286 billion baht from 18,652 firms. For anyone deciding where to open, hire, or sell in the North, the map is blunt: depth of demand and supplier density concentrate in Chiang Mai, then fall away province by province. The upside sits in the same fact. The eleven thin provinces are underbuilt rather than saturated, which is where a challenger has room to be first. The national picture frames the stakes. The North contributes a smaller slice of Thailand's output than of its firm count, a pattern the country's regional accounts have long shown for the upper provinces (NESDC, 2024).