•Explore the link between agency and actors in regional industrial path development.•Analyzes the transition towards bioeconomy in the Swedish region Värmland.•Emphasizes the role of structural maintenance agency and fringe agents. Despite significant interest in regional industrial restructuring in economic geography, surprisingly, scarce attention has been paid to the changing role of agency over time. The current paper develops a framework for understanding the role of multiple types of actors and the agency they exercise for regional industrial path development. The framework is employed in a longitudinal study of industry development in Värmland, Sweden, from forestry towards a bio-economy. The analysis highlights how actors exercise very different types of agency in different periods of regional industrial path development.