Hong Kong's Education Hub Drive Will Require 50 New School Campuses

Hong Kong could need as many as 50 new international school campuses and more than 1.1 million square metres of additional educational floor space within the next decade, according to the South China Morning Post, which reported on new research by commercial real estate consultancy CBRE.

The projections are anchored to a government-backed ambition to transform Hong Kong into a regional education hub. Student visas reached a record 94,517 in 2025, up from 46,821 in 2022, while non-local enrolments at international schools have already climbed to nearly 30,000, an 11 percent increase over the same period.

A structural transformation

Marcos Chan, CBRE Hong Kong's executive director and head of research, said the territory's education sector is "undergoing a structural transformation." The commercial interest appears real: HKD 11.1 billion in education-related property transactions were recorded in just the first five months of 2026, compared with HKD 4 billion for the whole of 2025.

For operators of British-curriculum schools, the figures underline a demand dynamic that has been building since Hong Kong began actively recruiting through talent-scheme programmes. Affluent mainland Chinese families, alongside expatriate arrivals, have pushed enquiries well ahead of current capacity at several leading schools. Whether the territory can deliver the physical infrastructure fast enough to match that demand is now the central question for the sector.