A new report by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) says spending on nuclear weapons reaches a record level in 2025. ICAN reports that the world’s nine nuclear-armed states—identified as the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel—spend a combined $119 billion on nuclear arsenals. The figure represents an increase of about 19% compared with 2024, which ICAN describes as the largest annual rise since the group began tracking nuclear arms expenditure in 2020.
Both sources describe the increase as substantial, with ICAN attributing the higher total to additional spending of $16.8 billion above the previous year’s level. The report frames the result as the highest expenditure recorded in ICAN’s dataset for nuclear weapons spending among the tracked countries.
ICAN’s findings are based on its annual tracking of nuclear arms expenditure and are presented as an assessment of overall state spending rather than a breakdown by program or country in the excerpts provided.
