Season Recap

Dragons’ Den Season 21 Recap: Every Deal Worth Knowing

Season 21 by the numbers: 57 pitches, 32 deals, the biggest checks, and the products that are still selling.

Dragons' Den IndexUpdated 11 April 20266 min read

Series 21 of Dragons' Den, first broadcast in 2024, put 57 pitches in front of the panel. 32 of them walked out with a deal, a strike rate of 56 percent, and the Dragons collectively put about £1.2M behind the businesses they backed.

Series 21, broadcast in 2024, is the most recent series in this run, and it set a new high for the deal rate: 56 percent of pitches closed with money on the table.

Across the 22 series in our index, series 21's total investment of £1.2M ranks 3rd highest, and its 32 deals rank 2nd 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 21 sits where it sits on both counts.

How many pitches got a deal in series 21?

Of the 57 pitches that appeared in series 21, 32 secured investment, for a deal rate of 56 percent. That climbed sharply compared with the 53 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 56 percent figure alongside the raw count. 57 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 21

The biggest single deal of series 21 went to Kimaï, which secured £250,000 in exchange for 3 percent equity. The investment came from Steven Bartlett.

A 3 percent stake for £250,000 values Kimaï at roughly £8,333,333 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: £250,000 of the £1.2M the Dragons put into series 21 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 21

The categories that did best with the Dragons in series 21 were Fashion & Beauty, Health & Wellness and Food & Drink. That's notable on its own: in most series in this index, the catch-all 'Other' bucket tops the category list, since 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. Series 21 is one of the few where three named categories crowd 'Other' out of the top spots entirely.

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.

Health & Wellness taking a top spot in series 21 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 21 businesses are still trading?

Based on our tracking, Luxe Collective, Peggy Rain Ltd, Pop Specs and Standout Enterprises Ltd 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.