Despite cost-of-living pressures, Australians are continuing to spend at shopping centres, with food catering and food retail emerging as the strongest growth drivers across all centre types, new Urbis data reveals.

However, outer-metropolitan centres are experiencing comparatively weaker growth despite strong population growth, highlighting a disconnect between population growth and retail spending performance in some of Australia’s fastest-growing areas, according to the Urbis Shopping Centre Benchmarks, published today (15 October).

Drawing on data from 516 Australian shopping centres, spanning neighbourhood centres through to major CBD and super-regional destinations, the dataset represents 14.6 million sqm of gross leasable area, $118.8 billion in reported turnover and 46,743 tenants, providing a national snapshot of how Australian shopping centres and retailers are performing.

Key findings

• Analysis of comparable centres between 2025 and 2026 reveals a return to more stable trading conditions following several years of disruption and cost-of-living pressure, but with increasingly different growth patterns emerging across locations and centre types.
• Food catering and food retail were the standout category growth drivers across all centre classes, increasing by 7.5% and 6.9% respectively year-on-year. Other significant growth categories for shopping centres were ‘feel good’ categories like jewellery which grew by 11.6% year-on-year, and in-centre consumption categories like entertainment and retail services, which grew by 8.8% and 6.2% respectively.
• Non-food mini-majors also performed strongly with retail sales up 7% year-on-year, as retailers such as Uniqlo increasingly fill space traditionally occupied by department stores.
• CBD centres delivered the strongest growth at 7.1% year-on-year, while regional centres also recorded solid turnover growth, driven primarily by super-regional centres, which recorded a 5% surge in retail sales.
• Despite leading population growth, outer metropolitan centres recorded some of the weakest retail growth, at just 3.9% year-on-year compared with population growth of 2.2%.