At least 2,707 people were executed by governments around the world in 2025 — the highest figure Amnesty International has recorded in 44 years. The true number is almost certainly far higher.

The count excludes China, which Amnesty describes as the world’s leading executioner and which treats its death penalty data as a state secret. Thousands more are believed to have been put to death there.

The recorded total represents a 78% increase from 2024, when Amnesty confirmed 1,518 executions. The last year to exceed 2025 was 1981, when 3,191 were logged.

A handful of states, a wave of killings

The spike was dominated by a small group of countries. Iran alone accounted for 2,159 confirmed executions — roughly 80% of the global total and more than double its 2024 figure. Amnesty attributed the surge to Tehran’s intensified use of capital punishment as a tool of political repression. According to AFP, the crackdown accelerated after the June 2025 war with Israel, and rights groups have reported that executions continued to rise into 2026.

Saudi Arabia carried out at least 356 executions, surpassing its own record from 2024. Many were for drug-related offenses.

Drug enforcement was a major driver worldwide. Nearly half of all confirmed executions — 1,257 — were for drug-related charges across China, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore. Several countries, including Algeria, Kuwait, and the Maldives, moved to expand the death penalty’s reach into drug cases. Methods of execution recorded in 2025 included beheading, hanging, lethal injection, shooting, and nitrogen gas asphyxiation.

Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard said that ‘this shameless minority are weaponizing the death penalty to instil fear, crush dissent and show the strength state institutions have over disadvantaged people and marginalized communities.’

Four countries resumed executions after pauses: Japan, South Sudan, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates, bringing the total number of executing countries to 17.

The United States nearly doubles its count

The US recorded 47 executions across 11 states, up from 25 in 2024 — the highest American total since 2009.

Florida drove the surge, accounting for 19 of those executions. According to Justin Mazzola, Amnesty’s deputy director for research, Florida typically executes between one and six people per year. ‘Last year, they executed 19 individuals, so almost one every couple of weeks,’ he told NPR. Governor Ron DeSantis has championed capital punishment as a ‘strong deterrent’ and, in 2023, eliminated the requirement that juries unanimously recommend the death penalty before it can be imposed.

The increase ran counter to public sentiment. Gallup polling found support for capital punishment in the US at 52% — a five-decade low, down from a peak of 80% in 1994. Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which studies state executions without taking a position on abolition, said that ‘the majority of US juries are rejecting death sentences for a variety of reasons,’ citing concerns about fairness and wrongful conviction.

For the 17th consecutive year, the US was the only country in the Americas to carry out executions.

The abolitionist counter-trend

The record execution figures sit alongside a quieter trajectory in the opposite direction. When Amnesty began its anti-death-penalty work in 1977, 16 countries had abolished capital punishment. By the end of 2025, that number stood at 113 — more than half the world’s nations, with more than two-thirds abolitionist in law or practice.

No executions were recorded in Europe or Central Asia. Vietnam abolished the death penalty for eight offenses, including drug transportation and bribery. Gambia eliminated it for murder and treason. In Kyrgyzstan, the Constitutional Court ruled that any attempt to reintroduce the death penalty would violate the constitution. Zimbabwe commuted all existing death sentences.

In the US, the death row population fell below 2,000 for the first time since Amnesty began tracking the figure, driven by commutations and natural deaths. In Alabama, Governor Kay Ivey granted clemency to Rocky Myers — the first such grant to a Black death row inmate in the state’s history.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk called for ‘universal recognition — reflected in law — that the way to protect societies is not through executions, but through strong institutions and accountability.’

The defining tension of the 2025 data is this: the countries that execute are fewer than ever. Collectively, they are killing more.

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