Starting an art, music or dance academy: the Tuesday business
An academy lives on repeat business: memberships, levels and a regular place. The market in figures, the sums that come before the premises and January's mistakes.
Equipo Aforo
From the trade ·
In short
The market, the membership model and the number that matters most.
An academy lives on Tuesdays and a studio on Saturdays: the same student, at the same time, the whole school year.
In Spain there are between 600 and 1,000 drawing and painting academies, within the 2,000 to 3,500 creative spaces with classes.
These are Aforo’s estimates from August 2026, because there is no official census.
The model has three parts. The first is the monthly membership, with a bill, a pro-rated first month and arrears in plain sight.
The second is levels, which sort out who you have in front of you.
The third is the regular place, which means the Tuesday spot belongs to whoever pays for it.
The number that matters most is occupancy per group, because an empty place in a group that already has its teacher and the lights on is lost margin.
September recruitment is won or lost on pre-enrolment, a trial class with a date and a message to the students who left in June.
An academy is a business built on repeat custom.
A studio lives on Saturdays (the drop-in class, the present, the group); an academy lives on Tuesdays: the same student, at the same time, the whole school year.
That difference shapes everything: the price, the premises, recruitment and the software. This guide is about starting the second kind.
The market: how many there are and what it means
In Spain there are between 600 and 1,000 drawing and painting academies, within the 2,000–3,500 creative spaces with classes in our estimate from August 2026 (there is no official census).
Almost all of them compete in the same slot, after-school afternoons, and almost none work the mornings (adults, retired people, people on afternoon and evening shifts).
The gap is usually in the timetable, not on the map.
The model: membership, level and regular place
An academy’s product is a seat reserved in time: “Tuesdays at six, with their group and their level”. That’s where the model’s three parts come from:
- The monthly membership is the income that pays the rent. With a bill, with pro-rating in the month someone joins and with arrears in plain sight when it doesn’t arrive.
- Levels sort out who you have in front of you, from beginner to advanced. Without levels, every class is an endless beginners’ class and the good students leave.
- The regular place means the Tuesday spot belongs to whoever pays for it. Cancelling one day doesn’t get you dropped from the course; stopping the membership does.
The numbers before the premises
An academy’s sums are a studio’s (floor, ceiling and capacity) with one nuance that changes everything: repeat custom multiplies.
A regular place that’s taken is worth its membership fee EVERY month of the school year. So every empty place in a group that already has its teacher and the lights on is pure margin lost.
That’s why the number that matters most is occupancy per group, and the waiting list for each level is what keeps it high.
The recruitment that works in September
- Pre-enrolment opens the course before it opens. Those already with you choose first (seniority is rewarded, not assumed) and you know how many groups to run before committing to teachers.
- A trial class with a date converts better than an open-ended “come whenever you like”, because it has a day and a time to write down.
- The ones who left in June. A reopening message to former students is the cheapest campaign you have.
The mistakes you pay for in January
Academies don’t empty in January: they empty in October, when nobody noted who was missing.
- Charging “whenever you can”: a membership without a bill turns into a monthly negotiation with every family.
- Not recording absences: January’s drop-out starts giving warning in October, by missing classes. If you write it down, you get there in time.
- Groups without levels: mix the beginner with the third-year student and you’ll lose both.
- The waiting list in your head: today’s full group is tomorrow’s new group, but only if you know who’s waiting.
All of the above are rules, and rules have to be written once and left to a system to apply.
If you’re choosing that system, our guide to what a booking system for classes should have and the comparison of the 11 programs on the market save you the research.
And Aforo as software for academies is exactly this: memberships, regular places and priority enrolment, out of the box. The version for the craft is in Aforo for art, drawing and painting academies.
Frequently asked questions
How many drawing and painting academies are there in Spain?
Between 600 and 1,000 with classes, within the 2,000 to 3,500 creative spaces Aforo estimated in August 2026.
It isn’t an official figure: there is no census of creative academies in Spain, so the number comes from measuring an entire city by hand and extrapolating by population.
More useful than the national number is what the split by time slot shows.
Most academies compete in the same place, after-school afternoons, where they also compete with football, English and music.
Adult mornings are usually far less served, and that’s the slot where retired people or people with flexible hours pay a monthly membership without haggling.
Before you open, count how many academies in your city teach adults in the morning. If the answer is one or none, there’s your starting timetable.
What’s the difference between starting an academy and starting a studio?
The income model, and everything else follows from it. A studio lives on Saturdays: the drop-in class, the experience someone gives as a present, the group that comes once.
An academy lives on Tuesdays: a monthly membership with its bill, levels, a regular place all school year and students who have been coming for three years.
That changes the price, because a membership is compared with other memberships and not with a leisure activity.
It changes recruitment, because your best September campaign is pre-enrolment for the students who were already with you and a message to those who left in June, and paid advertising comes after both.
And it changes the software you need: running monthly memberships, pro-rating the month someone joins, make-up classes with rules and people leaving mid-month are nothing like selling one-off places on Saturdays.
How do you fill an academy in September?
With three levers, and the order matters more than the levers. The first is pre-enrolment: you open places to the students who were already with you before anyone else.
That way they choose their timetable first, and you know how many groups you’ll have before committing to teachers and rent.
The second is a trial class on a specific date, not a “come whenever you like”, because an invitation without a date never gets used.
And the third is the reopening message to the students who left in June, which is the cheapest campaign there is and almost nobody runs: people who already know you, already know how to get there and already know what it costs.
Paid advertising comes after these three, not before: if your pre-enrolment is empty, paying for more new people won’t fix it.
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