Understanding Cancer Statistics

Cancer has a major impact on society in the United States and across the world. Cancer statistics describe what happens in large groups of people. They give a picture, at one point in time, of the burden of cancer on society.

Statistics tell us how many people are diagnosed with cancer each year, and how many die from it. They tell us how many people are living after a cancer diagnosis, the average age at diagnosis, and how many people are still alive at a given time after diagnosis. They also show differences between groups. Those groups may be defined by age, sex, racial or ethnic group, geographic location, and other categories.

Statistics describe groups, not individuals — they paint the big picture of cancer's impact.

Cancer statistics also help us see trends. Looking at cancer rates over time lets us track changes in the risk of developing and dying from specific cancers, and from cancer overall.

Statistical trends usually do not apply directly to one patient. But they are essential for governments, policy makers, health professionals and researchers. They show the impact of cancer on the population, and they guide planning. Trends also let us measure whether efforts to control and manage cancer are working.

Some key figures on cancer in the United States:

• For 2026 the American Cancer Society projects 2,114,850 new cancer diagnoses in the United States and 626,140 deaths. Yearly counts like these are ACS projections, not NCI measurements, although SEER publishes them.
• Ranked by projected new cases for 2026, the order runs prostate cancer (333,830), breast cancer (324,580), lung and bronchus cancer (229,410), colon and rectum cancer (158,850), melanoma of the skin, and bladder cancer.
• NCI’s general statistics page has not yet been refreshed past 2025. For 2025 it put prostate, lung, and colorectal cancers at an estimated 48% of all cancers diagnosed in men, and breast, lung, and colorectal at 51% of new diagnoses in women.
• The rate of new cases of cancer (incidence) is 450.7 per 100,000 men and women per year, an NCI measurement based on 2019–2023 cases.
• The cancer death rate (mortality) is 143.2 per 100,000 men and women per year, based on 2020–2024 deaths.
• SEER counted roughly 18.6 million people living with a cancer diagnosis in the United States in 2023. NCI projects that number will reach 26 million by 2040.
• About 39.2% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes, based on 2021–2023 data.
• For 2025, the most recent year NCI has published, an estimated 14,690 children and adolescents ages 0 to 19 were expected to be diagnosed with cancer, and 1,650 to die of it.

Cancer is among the leading causes of death worldwide. In 2022, there were almost 20 million new cases and 9.7 million cancer-related deaths worldwide. By 2050, the number of new cancer cases per year is expected to rise to 33 million. Deaths are expected to rise to 18.2 million.

In general, cancer rates are highest in countries whose populations have the highest life expectancy, education level, and standard of living. But for some cancer types the reverse is true. Cervical cancer is one example. Its rate is highest in countries whose populations rank low on those measures. These worldwide figures come from the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

The best single sign of progress against cancer is a change in age-adjusted mortality (death) rates. Other measures, such as quality of life, matter too.

Incidence matters as well. But changes in incidence are not always simple to read. A rise can reflect a real increase in cases, such as when more exposure to a risk factor causes more cancer. In that case, deaths would likely rise too. A rise can also happen because a new screening test finds many cancers that would never have caused a problem in someone's life. That is called overdiagnosis. In that case, incidence goes up but death rates do not change.

Sometimes death rates drop faster than incidence, or drop while incidence is rising. That may reflect better treatments.

In the United States, the overall cancer death rate has fallen since the early 1990s. The most recent Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, released in April 2025, showed that overall cancer death rates decreased by:

• 1.7% per year among men from 2018 to 2022
• 1.3% per year among women from 2018 to 2022
• 1.5% per year among children ages 0–14 from 2001 to 2022

Death rates for many individual cancer types have also fallen. But rates for a few cancers have not changed, or have even gone up. As the overall death rate has dropped, the number of survivors has grown. These trends show progress, but much work remains. Rates of smoking, a major cause of cancer, have fallen. Meanwhile rates of other risk factors, such as obesity, have risen. The U.S. population is also aging, and cancer rates increase with age.

The National Cancer Institute runs the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program. It collects and publishes cancer incidence and survival data from population-based cancer registries. Those registries cover approximately 48% of the U.S. population.

The Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer gives a yearly update of cancer incidence, mortality, and trends in the United States. It is written jointly by experts from the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Cancer Society, and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries.

Two vintages sit side by side on this page. The yearly case and death projections come from the American Cancer Society. The per-100,000 rates, lifetime risk and prevalence are NCI measurements from the SEER registries. Both are published at SEER Stat Facts: all cancer sites and common cancer sites.

Statistics track how the whole country is doing against cancer — and lately, the overall trend has been improving.