The world spent $2,887 billion on its military in 2025 — and the American share fell

World military expenditure reached $2,887 billion in 2025. SIPRI, which has tracked the series since the 1960s, records that as a 2.9 per cent rise in real terms over 2024 and the highest level it has ever measured. Over the decade 2016–25 the total is up 41 per cent.

The year is unusual in one respect that the headline hides. The single largest spender, the United States, cut its military expenditure by 7.5 per cent — and world spending went up anyway. Excluding the USA, the rest of the world increased military spending by 9.2 per cent in 2025.

What 2.5 per cent of everything looks like

Three ratios put the total in proportion, and each answers a different question. Military expenditure was 2.5 per cent of global GDP in 2025, up from 2.4 per cent in 2024 — that is the share of everything the world produced. It was 6.9 per cent of government expenditure, down slightly from 7.0 per cent, which is the share of what governments actually spend. And it came to $352 per person on the planet.

The three move independently, which is why quoting only one can mislead. The GDP share rose while the government-spending share fell, because government budgets grew faster than output. A country can raise its military budget substantially and still spend a smaller share of its budget on the military than it did the year before.

Why the American figure fell

US military expenditure was $954 billion in 2025, down 7.5 per cent on 2024 — though still 11 per cent above 2016. The reason for the fall is a definitional point worth understanding, because it is not a story about the American armed forces getting smaller.

SIPRI counts financial military assistance as part of the military expenditure of the country giving it, not the country receiving it. In the preceding years the United States had been appropriating large supplemental sums — money voted beyond the Department of Defense's initial budget — for military assistance overseas. In 2025 that supplemental funding dropped sharply. The decline in the US total is largely the disappearance of money that was never going to be spent on US forces in the first place.

This is the kind of accounting rule that decides what a number means. Ask "did America spend less on its own military in 2025" and the SIPRI headline does not answer you, because the series was never built to.

The gap to China is closing, slowly

The United States still accounts for a third of all military spending in the world. But its share has been falling steadily since 2020, and dropped 4.3 percentage points between 2024 and 2025 alone — the combined effect of the US cut and widespread increases elsewhere.

In 2025 the USA spent 2.8 times as much on the military as China, the next largest spender, down from 3.2 times in 2024. China's own spending rose 7.4 per cent to an estimated $336 billion, holding its share of the global total steady at 12 per cent. Russia, third, increased spending by 5.9 per cent to an estimated $190 billion — 6.6 per cent of world spending, and an estimated 7.5 per cent of Russian GDP.

How concentrated the total is

Military spending is far more concentrated than most global economic quantities. The five biggest spenders — the United States, China, Russia, Germany and India — accounted for $1,686 billion between them, 58 per cent of the world total. Widen the group to fifteen countries and it covers $2,304 billion, or 80 per cent of everything spent on the military anywhere.

Twelve of those top fifteen increased spending in 2025. Only three did not: the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel. The sharpest increases came from countries lower in the ranking — Spain, fifteenth, raised spending by 50 per cent; Poland, fourteenth, by 23 per cent; Italy and Ukraine by 20 per cent each.

The square brackets matter

SIPRI prints some figures in square brackets and others plain, and the difference is not decorative. A bracketed figure is SIPRI's own estimate, reconstructed where a government does not publish accounts that can be compared with other countries'. China and Russia are both bracketed. Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Japan are not.

That distinction is carried through to the counters on this site: the pages for China and Russia are labelled as estimates, the European and Japanese pages as reported figures. It is a small piece of bookkeeping, and it is the difference between a number you can check and a number you have to trust.

One more caution on comparing years. SIPRI states its percentage changes in real terms against constant 2024 dollars, while the dollar totals quoted here — $2,887 billion, $954 billion, $336 billion — are at current prices and exchange rates. Dividing this year's current-price figure by last year's will not reproduce SIPRI's percentage, and the difference is not an error in either.