general
European NATO defense spending rises nearly 20% in 2025, report says
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte says Europe and Canada invested $574 billion in defense in 2025, a near 20% real increase, while all allies met the 2% GDP spending target and the US share of NATO spending fell.
Mar 26th 2026 ยท World
Insights
- Europe and Canada spent $574 billion on defense in 2025, a 20% real-terms increase from 2024 and a 106% rise since 2014.
- All NATO allies reported meeting the 2% of GDP defense target in 2025, and three reported meeting the 3.5% objective for 2035.
- US defense spending fell slightly to $838 billion in 2025 while its share of NATO spending dropped from 64% to 59%.
- Several members, including Belgium, Canada, Spain and Italy, reported defense spending figures between 2.00% and 2.05% of GDP.
- Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Denmark and Norway each spent a higher share of GDP on defense than the US rate of 3.19%.
- Only Belgium, Albania and Estonia failed to meet the NATO guideline of allocating at least 20% of defense budgets to new equipment.
- NATO endorsed a target to reach 5% of GDP on defense and related resilience investments by 2035 and named Russia, amid the war in Ukraine, as the primary threat.
Sources
- Canada officially hits NATO defence spending target of 2% GDP www.ctvnews.ca
- NATO reports 20% increase in Europe, Canada's defence spending www.france24.com
- European NATO defense spending rose by almost 20% in 2025 www.dw.com
- NATO defense spending surges 20% as allies push toward 5% target tvpworld.com