Creativity Has No Borders

Our 2020 roadmap for a more connected global community: new currencies and more

Across the globe, creative people are making amazing things. They are scrappy and inventive. They use all means possible to create, collaborate, and share their work with the communities they love. The internet has enabled an explosion of creativity where every creator, no matter where they are, can be seen and heard, and where audiences all over the world can enjoy their work.

Patreon is already a global community of creators and patrons. We’re proud to serve more than 150K creators from over 180 countries, with patrons from literally every country on the planet! More than 40% of creators and patrons on Patreon are based outside of the US, and most creators have patrons from countries outside their own.

For example, Hainbach, an experimental musician and composer based in Germany, has patrons from 36 different countries who enjoy his music, love learning about his techniques, and sometimes even get the opportunity to participate in his compositions.

“I find that my patrons come from all over the world. It’s a new phenomenon that you can enable your favorite artists this directly to do what they love, and become an incredibly important part of that journey. Seeing creations come to life and artists thrive is an incredibly rewarding feeling.” — Hainbach

Euros (€), British Pounds (£), new payment methods and languages

To better support our global community, Patreon is expanding to create more opportunities for all creators to have direct relationships with fans anywhere in the world. We’re starting with Europe, where we already have a very strong creator and patron community. To get the party started, we’re opening an office in Berlin to serve as a homebase for building relationships with creative communities across Europe. This is in addition to offices in Porto, Portugal and Dublin, Ireland where we already have members of our engineering, customer support and trust and safety teams located.

Supporting a global community means enabling more currencies and payment methods to make it easier for fans to support creators. Starting today, new creators who launch on Patreon will be able to price their tiers and be paid in either Euros (€), British Pounds (£), or US Dollars ($). Learn more here.

This is just the first step. Within the next few months, creators already on Patreon will be able to accept these new currencies, too. By this summer, we’ll add more payment methods including direct debit. We’ve already added shipping to Canada, Australia, the UK, and Germany with our Merch for Membership, with more countries coming this year.

And to make Patreon more inclusive and user-friendly to creators and patrons everywhere, this year we’ll be working on language localization. You’ll hear more about this toward the end of 2020.

Amazing European creators

To celebrate our growing community, we’re highlighting a handful of our European creators — some that have been on Patreon for years and others that are newly launched!

Einstürzende Neubauten: German experimental music group which has been making their unique music for more than 30 years

Berlin Food Stories: Freelance journalist uncovering and sharing the best food of Berlin

Sara Faber: An independent artist and illustrator who runs her own illustration business

Judith Holofernes: Singer, guitarist, songwriter, author and the former lead singer of the German pop-group Wir sind Helden

Easy German: An ongoing educational language series from the streets of Berlin

Rival: Pianist, electronic music producer, and performer who’s been producing music in some form or another for most of his life

Lioba Brueckner: Painter who’s been able to quit her day job and create full-time, offering prints and tutorials through Patreon

We confidently see a future where every creator can connect directly with their fans anywhere in the world, and we’re beyond proud to be building towards it. It will take some time, but we believe in building a ladder to the moon, one rung at a time.