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Illinois · lobbying records · 2026 registrations, as of the state's Nov. 6, 2026 refreshChecked Nov. 7, 2026

Who lobbies in Springfield.

Registered lobbyists and the organizations that register to lobby the State of Illinois, from the Secretary of State's 2026 registration files.

2,346

registered lobbyists

People registered as lobbyists for 2026, counted once each by the Secretary of State's lobbyist ID, from the file that lists every lobbyist with the lobbying entity they are registered under. Leaves out 165 people whose every 2026 listing is marked terminated; includes 67 whose only listings are marked noncompliant, as the state marks them (we did not check why for each). The state's separate file of entities and their exclusive lobbyists names the same 2,346 IDs.

2,686

clients (lobbyist employers)

Lobbying entities registered for 2026, by the state's entity ID. In Illinois the registrant is the lobbying entity: a company, group or person that has its own lobbyists, hires an outside lobbying firm, or is itself such a firm. 1,235 list lobbyists of their own, 1,918 list an outside (contractual) lobbying entity, and 409 different entities are named as someone's outside lobbying entity; these overlap. 66 appear in none of those three lists. Separately, lobbying entities name 2,206 different clients (by client ID) for whom they lobby; that is a different count and is not added to this one.

Clients with the most reported lobbying expenditures: not yet pulled

No amounts yet. Illinois lobbying entities report expenditures (gifts, meals, travel and other spending on officials), not lobbyists' pay, and they file them twice a month; those reports are published only through the Secretary of State's lobbyist search, which we could not read (see gaps). The open-data files used here carry registrations only.

Sources: Illinois Secretary of State, Lobbyist Entity Client Data Daily (refreshed 2026-11-06 13:28 UTC); Illinois Secretary of State, Active Lobbying Entities (refreshed 2026-11-06 13:33 UTC); Illinois Secretary of State, Active Lobbying Entities and Their Exclusive Lobbyists; Illinois Secretary of State, Active Lobbying Entities and Their Contractual Lobbyists; Illinois Secretary of State, Active Lobbying Entities and Their Clients; Illinois Secretary of State, Lobbyist Information Search (not read; see gaps).

How to read this

Counts come from the Illinois Secretary of State's own registration files on the state data portal, which the state describes as active lobbying entities and their lobbyists and clients for the past five years; only 2026 rows are used, and other years are not mixed in. Registrations run by calendar year. A lobbyist registers under a lobbying entity; an entity that hires an outside firm and the firm both register, so entity counts include both. City of Chicago lobbying, registered with the Chicago Board of Ethics, is local, not state, and is not included. Registering to lobby is lawful and public; these records do not show that any official acted because of it.

What is not here yet

  • Expenditures by client: not yet pulled. Illinois publishes lobbying entities' semi-monthly expenditure reports through the Secretary of State's Lobbyist Information Search (apps.ilsos.gov/lobbyistsearch). From our workspace every request to ilsos.gov and apps.ilsos.gov failed (an HTTP/2 stream error, then timeouts and empty replies on HTTP/1.1, retried several times), and our page reader declined the search and the Index Department's lobbyist pages because the site's robots rules exclude them; we did not try to get around that. No open-data file of expenditures was found among the Secretary of State's datasets on the state portal. So no client amounts are shown.
  • The Index Department's lobbyist pages and publications on ilsos.gov (registration and expenditure guides, any downloadable lobbyist list) were not read: not yet checked.
  • Registration files were refreshed by the state on 2026-11-06 13:28 UTC, 2026-11-06 13:33 UTC; registrations filed after that are not counted. The files have no filing dates, so changes during the year cannot be traced.
  • The state's files call themselves active registrations for the past five years; how the state treats a registration terminated during the year differs between files (the lobbyist file keeps terminated listings with a status; the entity files do not give one). We did not establish the state's rule.
  • The state portal's older Daily Lobbyist Data page (data.illinois.gov/dataset/daily-lobbyist-data) now answers 'page not found'; the same files are listed under new addresses, which are the ones used.
  • Third-party sites that republish Illinois lobbying data (an independent Illinois campaign finance tracker and The Accountability Project) were seen in searches and not used. City of Chicago lobbying (Chicago Board of Ethics) is local and left out.

Gaps in the lobbying records as of the date checked.