Nine states hold an estimated 12,187 nuclear warheads; six more host weapons they do not own. Who has what, where it is going, and how the numbers are known.
| # | Country | Warheads | Deployed | Delivery |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇷🇺 Russia | 5,420 | 1,796 | |
| 2 | 🇺🇸 United States | 5,042 | 1,770 | |
| 3 | 🇨🇳 China | 620 | 34 | |
| 4 | 🇫🇷 France | 370 | 280 | |
| 5 | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | 225 | 120 | |
| 6 | 🇮🇳 India | 190 | — | |
| 7 | 🇵🇰 Pakistan | 170 | — | |
| 8 | 🇮🇱 Israel | 90 | — | |
| 9 | 🇰🇵 North Korea | 60 | — |
| Country | Owner | Est. warheads | Arrangement |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🇧🇾 Belarus | Russia | unconfirmed | Russian basing since 2023 |
| 🇧🇪 Belgium | United States | 15 | NATO nuclear sharing |
| 🇩🇪 Germany | United States | 15 | NATO nuclear sharing |
| 🇮🇹 Italy | United States | 35 | NATO nuclear sharing |
| 🇳🇱 Netherlands | United States | 15 | NATO nuclear sharing |
| 🇹🇷 Turkey | United States | 20 | NATO nuclear sharing |
| Country | Status | Program |
|---|---|---|
| 🇮🇷 Iran | Threshold state | No weapons; enrichment to 60%, struck in 2025 and 2026, unverified since |
| 🇿🇦 South Africa | Disarmed | Six devices built, all dismantled by 1991 under IAEA verification |
No nuclear-armed state publishes a current count of its weapons, so every figure on these pages is an estimate — and the estimates differ depending on what is being counted. The military stockpile is the set of warheads available to the armed forces, whether mounted on missiles or held in storage. The total inventory adds retired warheads that still exist but sit in a queue for dismantlement — the United States and Russia each hold more than a thousand of these. Deployed warheads are the subset actually sitting on missiles or at bomber bases, ready for use on short notice.
The figures here follow the estimates of the Federation of American Scientists' Nuclear Notebook and the SIPRI Yearbook, the two reference open sources, and the historical series is the FAS dataset published through Our World in Data under a CC BY license. Numbers for Russia, China, and especially North Korea carry real uncertainty; the databases update as the estimates do. On-site inspections of US and Russian strategic forces stopped in 2020 and data exchanges in 2023, and the expiry of New START in February 2026 removed the last legal ceiling, so the error bars will widen over time.
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As of early 2026, the nine nuclear-armed states hold an estimated 12,187 nuclear warheads. About 9,745 of them form the military stockpiles available to the armed forces; the remainder are retired warheads awaiting dismantlement. Roughly 4,000 warheads are actually deployed on missiles, submarines and bomber bases.
Nine states possess nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China (the five NPT nuclear-weapon states), plus India, Pakistan and North Korea, and Israel, which has never confirmed its arsenal. Six more countries host foreign warheads without owning them: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey store US bombs under NATO nuclear sharing, and Belarus hosts Russian warheads. Iran has no nuclear weapons but enriched uranium to 60% before its sites were struck — see Iran's nuclear program.
Russia, with an estimated 5,420 warheads in its total inventory, ahead of the United States with about 5,042. Together they hold about 86% of the world's nuclear weapons. China follows with roughly 620 and is still expanding its arsenal.
No — they are estimates. Only the United States has published a history of its stockpile; the UK publishes a ceiling and France stopped giving a total in 2026, and no state discloses current numbers precisely. The figures here follow the estimates of the Federation of American Scientists and SIPRI, which reconstruct arsenals from official statements, treaty data, satellite imagery and open sources. They are the reference numbers used by governments and media worldwide.
Global stockpiles peaked around 64,000 warheads in 1986 and have fallen by roughly 85% since, driven by US-Russian arms-control treaties. That decline has now essentially stopped: reductions of retired US and Russian warheads are offset by growing arsenals in China, India, Pakistan and North Korea, and the last US-Russian treaty limiting deployed weapons expired in February 2026.