All UN member states aim to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. 1 Countries' progression towards UHC can be monitored using the WHO and World Bank standardised framework, 2 whereas the World Bank Universal Health Coverage Study Series (UNICO) documents in depth the progress towards UHC of more than 40 countries. As more knowledge of countries' pathways towards UHC accumulates and given the call that “all nations need to be producers as well as consumers of research”, 3 one might wonder whether the available knowledge base on the UHC journey relies on a wide range of country experiences or only on a handful of distinctive and potentially unrepresentative ones.