There is a version of the world that exists only in headlines. In that world, terror is everywhere. It is escalating, unpredictable, and closing in. It is the first thing you see in the morning and the last thing you scroll past at night. It shapes how people vote, how governments spend, and how strangers look at each other on the street.

And then there is the world that exists in the data.

In 2025, terrorism-related deaths worldwide fell by 28 percent. Attacks dropped by nearly 22 percent. Both figures — deaths and incidents — reached their lowest levels since 2007, when the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) first began systematically tracking global terrorism through its annual Global Terrorism Index. These are not small movements in a noisy dataset. They represent the second consecutive year of meaningful global decline, following a decade in which the numbers had, at their worst, been catastrophically high.

The scale of progress is striking when seen in full. At the peak of global terrorism in 2014 — the year ISIS swept across Iraq and Syria — the world recorded more than 44,000 terrorism-related deaths. In 2025, that number stood at 5,582. That is still 5,582 tragedies. But it is also an 87 percent reduction from the worst year on record.

This is an AMAZING moment because of a number that almost no mainstream outlet reported: 119 countries recorded zero terrorism deaths in 2025. That is the best result since the GTI was first published. Nearly two-thirds of the world's nations — countries home to billions of people — experienced not a single terrorism fatality last year. Meanwhile, over 98 percent of all terrorism-related violence was concentrated in just 10 countries. The threat is real, but it is not everywhere. And that distinction matters enormously — for policy, for how societies treat each other, and for how individuals understand the world they actually live in.

Why does this matter to you? Because the gap between perceived danger and actual danger has consequences. When people believe the world is more violent than it is, they make different choices — about whom to trust, whom to fear, and what kinds of leaders to support. The Global Terrorism Index does not tell you there is nothing to worry about. It tells you that the story you are being sold is incomplete. The world is still producing terrorism. But the world is also, measurably and verifiably, reducing it. Both things are true simultaneously — and only one of them tends to make the front page.

The decline is not accidental. It reflects the collapse of ISIS as a territorial entity, sustained counter-terrorism cooperation between governments, improvements in community-level conflict prevention in several regions, and the fragmentation of large terrorist organisations into smaller, harder-to-sustain cells. Human beings — governments, security services, communities, and civil society — made choices that moved these numbers in the right direction.

I want to be honest with you about what this data does not say. The global decline masks sharp regional divergences. Pakistan recorded its highest terrorism death toll since 2013 — 1,139 deaths — for the sixth consecutive year of increase. Sub-Saharan Africa remains deeply affected, with groups like JNIM expanding their reach. And in the West, terrorism deaths surged by 280 percent in 2025, driven primarily by lone-wolf attacks tied to youth radicalisation and political extremism. The GTI's authors are explicit: emerging conflicts, particularly the escalation of tensions in the Middle East, and the growing use of drone technology by terrorist groups, create serious risks for the years ahead. The trend line is positive. It is not a guarantee.

None of that, however, should be allowed to erase what the data confirms. The world has made genuine, measurable progress against one of the most fear-generating phenomena of the modern era. That progress is built on real decisions, real cooperation, and real human effort. It can be reversed — but it can also be extended.

The story the headlines tell you shapes how you see the world. And when that story is systematically more frightening than the evidence supports, the cost is not just anxiety — it is distorted politics, eroded trust, and policies built on fear rather than fact. The Global Terrorism Index 2026 gives you something rarer than a reassuring headline. It gives you a true one. And in 2026, the truth is this: the world is less violent than the news would have you believe, more capable of collective progress than cynicism allows, and still — despite everything — moving, however unevenly, in the right direction.

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