Every few years UN-Water pulls the whole UN system’s water data into a single stocktake, the SDG 6 Synthesis Report. The 2026 edition marks ten years of SDG 6 and is the report that framed the water review at HLPF 2026. Its message is that the world knows what to do on water, and the gap is money and implementation, not knowledge.
The headline
By 2024, about 74% of people had safely managed drinking water (up from 68% in 2015) and roughly 58% had safely managed sanitation (up from 48%). Real progress, but ten years in, none of SDG 6’s targets are on track for 2030. To close the gap by then, the report finds the pace must accelerate roughly eightfold for safely managed drinking water, sixfold for sanitation and twofold for basic hygiene. It positions water as an accelerator of the wider agenda, a “superconnector” running through health, food, energy, cities and climate.
The money problem
The review the report anchored made under-investment its center: only a small share of national budgets goes to water, and private capital barely features. On a business-as-usual path, most sub-Saharan African countries would not reach safely managed drinking water until well after 2050. UN-Water’s framing is that the barrier is a shortage of bankable projects and financing structures, not a shortage of global capital. The report also stresses the importance of women’s participation in water governance, which fewer than a third of countries report at high levels. The companion Country Acceleration Case Studies gather national examples of what faster progress actually looks like.
Why it matters
Water is one of the better-measured Goals, which is exactly why its stall is so telling: the review still turned on gaps in disaggregated data and in the project pipeline that finance depends on. Because SDG 6 underpins so many other Goals, its pace sets a ceiling on progress elsewhere. This report is the evidence base member states worked from in the SDG 6 review at HLPF 2026; the next milestones are the 2026 UN Water Conference (Abu Dhabi, December 2026) and the 2027 SDG Summit.
Watch & read
- UN SDG 6 Synthesis Report on Water and Sanitation 2026, the full report (UN-Water).
- SDG 6 Country Acceleration Case Studies, the companion national examples.
- SDGCounting’s coverage of the SDG 6 review at HLPF 2026.
- The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2026, the wider stocktake this feeds into.
Figures are drawn from the report as published and from the SDG 6 review at HLPF 2026; some are rounded. Speaker remarks from the review are summarized in our session coverage.