Short answer: Burnaby business licence data shows 2,334 new licences in 2026 up to mid-October. Half of them are home-based businesses, contractors and other licences with no storefront. The other 841 are businesses at a real address, about 87 a month, and they are mostly health services (387) and offices (175). Industrial openings are rare: 23 so far this year.
This report is for Burnaby business owners and landlords tracking who is moving in, and for anyone who searched for the City's licence numbers and wanted them counted. It's a VendFynd analysis of the City of Burnaby's own open data, which anyone can download.
How we found the new ones
Burnaby's open data lists every approved licence currently in force, with its type, address and the dates its current term covers. It doesn't flag which licences are new, so we used the licence number. Burnaby issues numbers in sequence and a renewal keeps its old number. Licences that renew in December 2025 top out around number 186,253 (their 99th percentile), so any licence with a higher number and a term starting in 2026 was first issued this year. The same method drives the Burnaby part of our summer new-workplaces report.
The totals
| Group | New in 2026 (to Oct 12) | All active licences |
|---|---|---|
| Home-based, contractors, inter-municipal, mobile (no premises) | 1,169 | 6,691 |
| Rental housing licences | 324 | 5,079 |
| Businesses at a premises | 841 | 8,323 |
| of which health services | 387 | 1,996 |
| of which offices | 175 | 1,766 |
| of which personal services | 54 | 456 |
| of which retail | 51 | 617 |
| of which restaurants and food retail | 43 | 999 |
| of which industrial (warehouse, wholesale, manufacturing, labs) | 23 | 1,245 |
| of which auto | 16 | 398 |
| of which schools and childcare | 11 | 164 |
| of which vending and coin machines | 10 | 64 |
| of which fitness | 4 | 43 |
| All licences | 2,334 | 20,093 |
City of Burnaby Business Licences open data, extract 2026-10-12. Groups are VendFynd's. "Other" premises types (38 new) and not-for-profits (29 new) are in the premises total but not listed.
Almost all of the 324 new rental-housing licences are short-term rental (199) and house rental (107) licences whose term starts in January, so they behave like a calendar-year licence rather than a stream of openings.
Month by month
| Term starts | Premises | Health | Offices | Industrial | No premises |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 66 | 29 | 17 | 0 | 89 |
| February | 83 | 38 | 19 | 0 | 130 |
| March | 71 | 32 | 12 | 4 | 87 |
| April | 97 | 37 | 23 | 3 | 149 |
| May | 99 | 42 | 21 | 0 | 136 |
| June | 95 | 42 | 17 | 3 | 119 |
| July | 83 | 40 | 17 | 4 | 115 |
| August | 100 | 51 | 25 | 3 | 155 |
| September | 69 | 43 | 9 | 2 | 94 |
| October (to the 12th) | 78 | 33 | 15 | 4 | 95 |
Burnaby licences cover from the first of a month, so October already shows licences whose term starts on October 1. The pace is steady: between 66 and 100 premises licences start every month.
What's opening: therapists, offices, very few plants
Health services are 46% of new premises licences. Of the 387, 265 are registered therapists, 56 acupuncture, 26 chiropractic, 17 general health services, 10 dental and 9 physicians and surgeons. Most are small practices in shared buildings along Kingsway, which is the most common street for new premises licences overall (192 of 841).
Offices are 21%: 120 general offices, 18 accountants, 11 engineers and a handful of computer, real estate and legal offices.
Industrial is under 3%. The 23 new industrial licences are 9 general manufacturers, 4 general warehouses, 3 research and development labs, 2 printers, 2 general wholesalers, and 3 others. Only one is licensed for more than 50 persons: a general warehouse in the 51–150 band.
Size: what the licence type tells you
Burnaby doesn't publish employee counts, but some licence types carry a size band. Of the 1,089 active warehouse, wholesale and manufacturing licences that carry a size band, 1,032 are licensed for 1–50 persons, 44 for 51–150 and 13 for 151 or more. Retail is banded the same way (1–10, 11–50, 51+ persons), and 37 of the year's 51 new retail licences are in the smallest band.
Vending licences in Burnaby
Burnaby licenses vending machines too, per machine: $39 for a coin or note operated machine and $112 for one that takes a credit card in 2026. The schedule Council adopted on September 22, 2026 (Bylaw 14850) raises those to $41 and $117 from January 1, 2027 (Bylaw No. 14485, Schedule A2). The open data lists 44 active coin or note machine licences, 13 card machine licences and 7 amusement machine licences. Ten are new in 2026, and seven of those are card machines, which fits what we see on the ground: new machines are installed with card readers. If a company offers you a machine, ask whether it holds the City licence for it; our licence fee guide covers who pays in Burnaby, Richmond and Surrey.
What this means for a new Burnaby site
Most new licences are small: a single practitioner or a five-person office won't support a machine on its own. What does work is a building. A medical building on Kingsway with a dozen practices, or an office block with several tenants, can have the foot traffic no single tenant has, and the building manager usually decides. Our Burnaby warehouses page covers industrial sites, where the people are on the floor even when the licence says 1–50, and the site-fit scorer gives any site a score in a minute.
With VendFynd, a machine is $0 to you: the operator covers the machine, install, stocking, service and removal. You provide the spot and an outlet, about $15–20 a month in power for a drink machine. It's month to month with 30 days' notice and no-cost removal. See if your site qualifies.
About this data
- Dataset: City of Burnaby, Business Licences, every approved licence in the open data layer, downloaded 2026-10-12 (20,093 records). The City describes it as the locations of all approved business licences in Burnaby. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Burnaby.
- "New in 2026": licence number above 186,253 (the 99th percentile of numbers on licences renewing in December 2025) and a current term starting in 2026; 2,334 records. A business that changed ownership and got a new number counts as new. A licence issued in 2026 and already cancelled isn't in the data at all.
- Months are the month the licence term starts, not the day it was approved. January includes new licences back-dated to January 1.
- Groups are VendFynd's, from the licence type name. One licence covers one business at one address; a vending licence can cover more than one machine. No business is named.
Sources
- City of Burnaby, Business Licences (open data): https://data.burnaby.ca/datasets/burnaby::business-licences/about, extract 2026-10-12
- City of Burnaby, Business Licences map service, layer 17: https://gis.burnaby.ca/arcgis/rest/services/OpenData/OpenData1/MapServer/17
- Open Government Licence – Burnaby: https://data.burnaby.ca/pages/open-government-licence
- City of Burnaby, Consolidated Fees and Charges Bylaw No. 14485, Schedule A2: https://bylaws.burnaby.ca/media/Consolidated/14485CC.pdf, consolidation 2026.7, accessed 2026-10-12