Pride of Yorkshire: First photos from Sheffield factory of 300 lions & cubs coming to South Yorkshire in 2026

Next summer, South Yorkshire will be home to 150 life-sized lion sculptures and 150 lion cubs, as the Pride of Yorkshire sculpture trail takes over the streets.

Sheffielders will remember the elephants from Herd of Sheffield in 2021 and the Bears of Sheffield in 2021.

Now, in their most ambitious project yet, Attercliffe fibreglass factory Simpson Patterns are crafting the Pride in celebration of the Sheffield Children’s Hospital’s 150th anniversary next year.

Each lion is being designed and painted by artists, with schools and community groups decorating the cubs. The trail will stretch across Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster, before the large lions are auctioned to raise funds for the hospital.

Simpson Patterns also made the Bears of Sheffield in 2021 – but this new project is almost twice the size.

And, the first artists have already got their hands dirty at the Pride of Yorkshire painting studio, in a location yet to be revealed.

The trail runs from June to September 2026, before the large lions are auctioned to raise funds for Sheffield Children’s Hospital. The charity is now looking for businesses to come forward to sponsor them for the trail, as well as schools to get involved by designing and painting their very own cubs.

Photographer Simon Hulme captured these first photos of the lions taking shape - see our gallery below.

Cheryl Davidson, Project Lead for Pride of Yorkshire at Sheffield Children’s Hospital Charity, says seeing the first painted lions appear has been a fantastic milestone.

“We’re so excited to be welcoming artists into the Pride of Yorkshire studio space, and it’s brilliant to see the Pride beginning to take shape. It will be ten years since the Herd of Sheffield in 2016, and the Bears of Sheffield in 2021. Together they helped raise more than £1.5m for Sheffield Children’s Hospital Charity. Now we’re going even bigger, and want to raise £2.8m to celebrate Sheffield Children’s Hospital’s 150th year. This will be a trail for the whole region - not just Sheffield. The lions will appear in Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley too, and we can’t wait to see people from right across South Yorkshire coming together to find them all.”

Read more about the Pride of Yorkshire Project on their website,

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