Orangetheory Fitness is entering Italy for the first time, after parent company Purpose Brands signed an agreement with Italian fitness operator Icon Palestre to open four studios across greater Rome over the next four years. Announced on June 4, 2026, the deal extends one of the world’s best-known boutique fitness brands into a major European market and showcases a new, smaller-footprint studio format built for dense, real-estate-constrained cities.
Icon Palestre, led by CEO Felice Orsinetti, holds the franchise rights for the Rome metro area. The Rome studios will be among the first to use Orangetheory’s streamlined configuration, which shrinks the footprint and equipment package without changing OTF’s signature blend of strength and cardio classes. Italian manufacturer Technogym will supply part of the strength equipment.
Because international growth is the brand’s stated top priority for 2026. Following entries into Japan and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) earlier this year, Italy continues a deliberate global push aimed at markets where demand for functional, results-driven group training is rising.
“Italy is exactly the kind of market where it will thrive,” said Lauren Cody, Global Brand President of Orangetheory Fitness.
Purpose Brands framed the smaller studio as a franchisee advantage: it opens locations that larger formats could not support and meaningfully lowers upfront capital costs. That capex discipline mirrors the format experimentation seen across the boutique sector and detailed in Xponential Fitness’s global expansion strategy.
The Italy deal sits alongside momentum at Purpose Brands’ flagship gym brand, Anytime Fitness, which recently opened a corporate office in Madrid and renewed development agreements in the Netherlands, New Zealand and South Africa. Together the brands give Purpose Brands one of the deepest international franchising pipelines in fitness, comparable in ambition to the studio rollouts covered in our look at the Club Pilates business model.
The Rome deal is a signal worth reading for investors in the Gulf and Southeast Asia. By debuting a smaller-footprint format in a high-rent European capital, Orangetheory is effectively productizing market entry for territories where prime retail space is scarce and expensive — exactly the conditions franchisees face in cities like Dubai, Riyadh, Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City. Brands that can flex their box size and capex to local real estate, as OTF and other operators weighing Asia and MENA are doing, lower the barrier for regional master franchisees and de-risk multi-unit development.
Source: PR Newswire — Orangetheory Fitness Announces Expansion into Italy
