Season Recap

Dragons’ Den Season 20 Recap: Every Deal Worth Knowing

Season 20 by the numbers: 59 pitches, 31 deals, the biggest checks, and the products that are still selling.

Dragons' Den IndexUpdated 22 October 20256 min read

Series 20 of Dragons' Den, first broadcast in 2023, put 59 pitches in front of the panel. 31 of them walked out with a deal, a strike rate of 53 percent, and the Dragons collectively put about £990K behind the businesses they backed.

Series 20 aired across 2023 and pushed the deal rate past the halfway mark again, with more than half of every pitch that walked into the Den going home with an offer accepted.

Across the 22 series in our index, series 20's total investment of £990K ranks 7th highest, and its 31 deals rank 4th highest by count. Those two rankings don't always move together, since a series can rack up a lot of small deals or a handful of large ones, and series 20 sits where it sits on both counts.

How many pitches got a deal in series 20?

Of the 59 pitches that appeared in series 20, 31 secured investment, for a deal rate of 53 percent. That climbed sharply compared with the 47 percent deal rate the series before it, which gives a sense of how choosy, or how generous, this particular panel of Dragons was being that year.

None of this means the other pitches were bad businesses. Dragons' Den has always turned down founders who go on to build successful companies without a Dragon's money, and it has funded some that later folded. The deal rate measures what happened in the room, not how the businesses performed afterwards.

It's also worth reading the 53 percent figure alongside the raw count. 59 pitches is a leaner field than the biggest series in this index, so the same deal rate can represent very different numbers of actual businesses funded depending on how many founders got through the door that year.

The biggest deal of series 20

The biggest single deal of series 20 went to Big Clothing 4 You, which secured £150,000 in exchange for 35 percent equity. The investment came from Touker Suleyman.

A 35 percent stake for £150,000 values Big Clothing 4 You at roughly £428,571 at the point of the deal, the kind of valuation math that plays out on screen every time a Dragon and a founder haggle over percentage points.

That single deal accounts for a meaningful share of the series' total investment: £150,000 of the £990K the Dragons put into series 20 overall went into just this one pitch, which is a useful reminder that a series total is rarely spread evenly across every deal made.

What the Dragons backed most in series 20

The categories that did best with the Dragons in series 20 were Other, Fashion & Beauty and Sports & Outdoors. 'Other' topping the list is normal for this show: Dragons' Den pitches cover everything from kitchen gadgets to fintech apps, and a large share of any series doesn't fit neatly into a single retail category.

Beyond that catch-all, the categories that stood out say something about what founders were bringing to the Den that year, and which of those ideas the panel judged worth backing.

Fashion & Beauty taking a top spot in series 20 lines up with the kinds of products that tend to translate well to a live studio pitch: something the Dragons can hold, taste or try, rather than a service they have to take on faith.

Which series 20 businesses are still trading?

Based on our tracking, Carriedby Farino, Drag Diva, Psychic Sisters and Tabuu are still trading in some form as of 2026.

Dragons' Den success is not measured only in who gets a deal on the night. Some of the strongest survivors from any given series turned down an offer, or never got one, and built the business anyway. Deal or no deal, survival past broadcast is the harder test.