Experts said the increase of more than 11,000 cases reflected a large decrease in men receiving tests after Britain entered lockdown.
This means many cases are being diagnosed at a later stage, when the disease can be more deadly.
When prostate cancer is caught in the first two stages, survival rates are close to 100 per cent. But they drop to around 50 per cent for those treated at stage four.
The NHS figures for England show 54,732 cases diagnosed in 2022 - up from 43,378 the year before.
The surge of more than 11,000 cases is the biggest annual increase on record.
It follows a campaign to find the "missing men" who did not come forward or struggled to access GP care during the pandemic.
Prostate cancer was the cancer most affected by the pandemic, with around 14,000 fewer cases diagnosed than would have been expected in England and Scotland between April 2020 and December 2021.
The surge in diagnosis in the last year is even greater than the spike seen before Covid, when public statements by broadcasters Stephen Fry and Bill Turnbull about their experience of the disease drove a 20 per cent surge in diagnoses.
In 2022, 54,732 diagnoses of prostate cancer were recorded in England - a record high, and up from 43,378 last year and 50,553 in 2018, when they were at their previous peak.
Charities urged all men to consider their risk of the disease, with prostate cancer far easier to treat and less deadly if caught early.
Amy Rylance, assistant director of health improvement at Prostate Cancer UK, said: "Because of the many challenges that Covid brought to the NHS, and to each of us individually, there was a huge drop in men getting tested for prostate cancer and being referred for treatment.
"In fact, prostate cancer was the cancer most impacted by the pandemic, and by early 2022 there were over 14,000 men missing a prostate cancer diagnosis.
"To find these 'missing men', we launched a major campaign with the NHS in 2022, and created our online Risk Checker which enables men to quickly find out their risk of getting prostate cancer and what they can do about it. At the time we saw record-breaking numbers of referrals with suspected cancer and this data confirms the effectiveness of that campaign."
Ms Rylance added: "The earlier you catch prostate cancer the easier it is to treat. You are at higher risk if you're over 50, black, or have a family history of the disease - whether you have symptoms or not. You can take the Risk Checker in 30 seconds on the Prostate Cancer UK website."
"One in eight men will get prostate cancer, and despite these encouraging figures, too many men are still being diagnosed too late, when their cancer has spread and become incurable.
"Even before the pandemic, only 53 per cent of prostate cancer cases were diagnosed at the most curable stages, against an NHS target of 75 per cent".
She said the charity was calling on the Government to update NHS guidelines which stop GPs approaching men at risk giving them the option to have a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test.