Drawing on location theory, the local relationships between new firm formation and its determinants are explored in 290 municipalities across Sweden. From the robust geographically weighted regression (GWR) models, mostly positive relationships with new firm formation are shown for firm density, human capital level, industry diversification level and percentage of immigrants living in the area. In contrast, mostly negative relationships are shown for weighted mean distance to the nearest bank branches, establishment size, unemployment rate, industry specialization. Spatially constrained multivariate clustering is also applied to group municipalities with similar conditions. Patterns in the industry composition and the location attributes are then analysed for each cluster.