Russia had 995 registered companies and individual entrepreneurs whose main line of business is funeral services as of mid-2026, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported, citing data from the Russian corporate database service Rusprofile. That’s up 22.5% from a year earlier: the fastest growth in the number of funeral companies in Russia over the past five years.
A total of 11,500 organizations providing funeral services were registered in Russia as of the end of June, up 7.6% from a year earlier. Individual entrepreneurs make up 81% of market participants.
Russia’s federal statistics agency, Rosstat, has stopped publishing mortality data, but the Health Ministry has reported that deaths in January–June 2025 rose by just 0.9% year-over-year, to 915,900 people. Russians spent 57.8 billion rubles on funeral services in January–May 2026, according to Rosstat, 9.6% more than a year earlier.
Market participants and experts interviewed by the outlet attributed the rise in registered funeral companies to what they called the “forced removal of the business from the gray zone.” Funeral agents who previously operated without a license are now required to formalize their status in order to accept card payments and legally receive compensation from the state budget, one source told the outlet.
Another expert suggested the funeral business is reacting to changes in tax legislation. Companies that previously used a simplified tax scheme may be splitting up and registering as several individual entrepreneurs after the revenue threshold for VAT exemption was lowered from 60 million to 20 million rubles.
None of the outlet’s sources linked the increase in the number of funeral companies to Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
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