This is last year’s scorecard, kept as the baseline. In 2025, of the SDG targets with enough data to assess, 35% were on track or making moderate progress, about half were moving too slowly, and 18% had slipped below their 2015 levels. Read it against the 2026 edition to see what a year moved, and what it did not.
The headline
The Secretary-General framed 2025 as a “global development emergency,” with the annual SDG financing gap for developing countries at about $4 trillion and official development assistance down 7.1% in 2024. The report paired that with a reminder that the goals remained within reach: gains spanned the agenda, but not fast or evenly enough.
Wins and deficits
The decade’s real gains, as of the 2025 report: more than 110 million additional children and youth in school since 2015; new HIV infections down about 40% since 2010; malaria prevention credited with averting 2.2 billion cases and 12.7 million deaths since 2000; internet use up from 40% to 68% of the world; electricity reaching 92%; and social protection covering more than half the global population. Set against that: over 800 million people in extreme poverty, 2.2 billion without safely managed drinking water, 272 million children out of school, more than 120 million forcibly displaced, and 2024 recorded as the hottest year yet at 1.55 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
The counting story
As the authoritative global scorecard against the official UN indicator framework, the report is the benchmark other assessments are measured against. It leans on “latest available” data and points to the Medellín Framework for Action, adopted at the 2024 UN World Data Forum, as the roadmap for strengthening national statistical systems and closing the SDG data gaps. That measurement backbone is the reason the report can be compared cleanly year to year, and why SDGCounting treats it as the reference point.
Watch & read
- The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2025, the full report and data (UN Statistics Division).
- The SDG Report 2026, the current edition and our full read.
Figures are drawn from the 2025 report as published. This edition is retained for comparison; the 2026 edition carries the current global figures.