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An estimated 645 million people faced hunger in 2025, down from 2024 but still 61 million higher than before the Covid-19 pandemic.
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The UN report says the world remains off track to meet the 2030 Zero Hunger goal, despite some recent improvement.
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Africa has overtaken Asia as the region with the largest number of hungry people, with 309 million affected in 2025.
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Conflict, extreme weather, aid cuts and the rising cost of nutritious food could reverse recent gains, the report warns.
An estimated 645 million people faced hunger in 2025, a new United Nations report has found, marking a slight decline from the previous year but still leaving the world far off track to meet its zero hunger target by 2030.
The The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 report, released on July 21, 2026 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN and partner agencies, estimated that 7.8 per cent of the world’s population faced hunger in 2025. That amounts to between 608 million and 696 million people, with a point estimate of 645 million.
The share is down from 8.1 per cent in 2024 and 8.6 per cent in 2022. The report says the decline represents about 14 million fewer people facing hunger compared with 2024, and 43 million fewer than in 2022, continuing a slow global improvement.
But the number remains 61 million higher than in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Compared with 2015, when the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was launched, the prevalence of hunger is slightly lower, at 7.8 per cent in 2025 compared with 8 per cent in 2015. However, the number of people facing hunger has increased by about 50 million.
Progress remains uneven
Despite the positive trends highlighted in this year’s edition of SOFI report, it warns that progress remains uneven and vulnerable to multiple shocks. It says the world is still off track to meet the UN-mandated Sustainable Development Goal 2 of ending hunger by 2030.
The report flags three converging risks that could reverse recent progress before the deadline: the 2026 conflict in West Asia, the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, and cuts to official development assistance and humanitarian funding.
Modelling different scenarios for how the Middle East conflict could affect energy and fertiliser markets, the report estimates that the number of chronically undernourished people could fall to about 511 million by 2030 under a quick-recovery scenario.
But it says the number could be as high as 522 million if disruption to oil, gas and fertiliser supplies is more prolonged, largely because of slower economic growth and poverty reduction in low- and middle-income countries.
“Despite some marginal progress, one in four people worldwide — 2.1 billion — were food insecure, lacking regular access to sufficient food for an active and healthy life,” the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) said in a statement.
Africa becomes hunger epicentre
For the first time since such data has been tracked, Africa has overtaken Asia as the region with the largest number of hungry people. In 2025, hunger affected 309 million people in Africa, compared with 292 million in Asia. As a share of population, Africa’s hunger rate was far higher, at 20 per cent, compared with 6 per cent in Asia.
Africa had become the global epicentre of hunger, stated IPES-Food. It said one in five people on the continent now faced hunger, an increase of 81 per cent since 2010, driven by conflict, climate shocks, debt and dependence on food imports.
Much of the unaffordability in Africa was linked to nutrient-rich animal- a cycle of malnutrition and poverty”, said Appolinaire Djikeng, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute
While food production has expanded in many regions, the report shows that nutritious foods often remain costly because expenses accumulate across storage, processing, transport and retail stages. Nearly one-third of the world’s population remained unable to afford a healthy diet, exposing millions to malnutrition and diet-related non-communicable diseases.
“…this is a failure of political choices. Healthy diets are becoming a luxury for billions, while farmers are paid less and consumers pay more. That isn’t an accident – it’s the result of a food system where a handful of powerful traders, processors and retailers set the prices and pocket the profits. You cannot lower the cost of a healthy diet without asking who profits from an unhealthy one,” said Raj Patel, IPES-Food panel expert, and professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
