Global Smart Street Light Installations Growing At 18% CAGR

Smart Street Lighting Enters Its Next Growth Phase

The global smart street lighting market is moving beyond isolated pilots and becoming a mainstream element of municipal LED modernization. Berg Insight estimates that the worldwide installed base of individually controlled smart streetlights reached 38.5 million units at the end of 2025 and will grow to 87.6 million units by 2030, representing a 17.9% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

That forecast signals a market that is no longer defined solely by the conversion from legacy lamps to LEDs. The next value proposition is networked control: the ability to monitor, meter, dim, schedule and diagnose individual luminaires—or groups of luminaires—remotely. For municipalities, utilities and roadway operators, smart controls can turn an LED retrofit into an operational platform with continuing value over the asset life of the lighting system.

From Energy Project to Infrastructure Platform

The core financial case for LED street lighting remains compelling, but individually addressable controls extend the opportunity. Remote management can help operators tailor lighting levels to time of night, traffic patterns, weather conditions and local policy requirements. It can also reduce truck rolls by reporting outages and other maintenance needs before residents or field crews identify them manually.

More importantly, the connected luminaire network is increasingly being viewed as digital infrastructure. Pole-mounted lighting assets provide a distributed, powered and geographically comprehensive platform for additional smart-city functions, including environmental sensing, traffic applications, public safety technologies, EV charging and wireless communications. The commercial implication is clear: lighting-control suppliers increasingly compete not just on dimming and monitoring features, but on interoperability, cybersecurity, device lifecycle management and the capacity to support adjacent applications.

Europe Leads, North America Follows

Europe accounted for approximately 36% of the global installed base of individually controlled smart streetlights in 2025, maintaining its position as the leading regional market. North America represented 29%, while China accounted for roughly 15% of the worldwide installed base.

Europe’s leadership reflects its early adoption of energy-efficiency programs, municipal modernization initiatives and connected-infrastructure procurement. North America remains a major market, supported by utility-owned street-lighting networks, city conversion programs and the continuing replacement of aging high-intensity-discharge systems. The large installed base in both regions also creates a sizable opportunity for upgrades, network expansions and system migrations as older communications platforms and control architectures reach the end of their useful life.

Connectivity and Competition Evolve

The market remains diverse. Berg Insight identified more than 100 smart streetlighting vendors, although relatively few have surpassed one million deployed lighting-control units. Signify held the largest installed base at the end of 2025, at approximately 6.2 million lighting control units, followed by Itron and China’s Fonda Technology. Together, the top three suppliers accounted for nearly one-third of the worldwide installed base, underscoring both the presence of scale leaders and the continuing fragmentation of the market.

Proprietary RF mesh networks remain important because of their presence in earlier large-scale deployments. However, cellular connectivity is expected to be the fastest-growing communications category in the years ahead. That shift could favor solutions that simplify deployment, reduce reliance on specialized network infrastructure and offer a more direct path to long-term connectivity management.

For the lighting industry, the streetlighting opportunity is becoming more software- and services-intensive. Product performance still matters, but future differentiation will increasingly depend on open integration, scalable connectivity, data management and a credible plan for maintaining control systems over a decade or more.

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Top image courtesy of Pixabay.com.

David Shiller

David Shiller is the Publisher of LightNOW, and Senior Business Development Consultant at Capacity Consulting, a North American consulting firm providing business development services to advanced lighting manufacturers. The ALA awarded David the Pillar of the Industry Award. David has been co-chair of the ALA’s Engineering Committee since 2010. David established MaxLite’s OEM component sales into a multi-million dollar division. He invented GU24 lamps while leading ENERGY STAR lighting programs for the US EPA. David has been published in leading lighting publications, including LD+A, enLIGHTenment Magazine, LEDs Magazine, and more.

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