Highlights:

The Global Report on Food Crisis (GRFC) 2026 estimates that about 266 million people in 47 food crisis countries and territories faced high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC/CH Phase 3 or above, or equivalent) in 2025. This represents 22.9 percent of the analysed population, and a marginal increase from the 22.3 percent reported in 2024.

Number of people and share of analysed population in GRFC countries/territories facing high levels of acute food insecurity, 2016 -2025

The trend of the total population in high levels of acute food insecurity presented by the different editions of the GRFC needs careful interpretation since the total population analysed in the report has also increased over the years. However, when looking at the evolution of the prevalence, it is observed that the proportion of people in high levels of acute food insecurity has more than doubled in the period 2016 – 2025. The report shows that the proportion has remained over 20 percent since 2020.

According to data from all 10 editions of the GRFC, 33 countries aren't just facing temporary food crises, they are "protracted" crises. Because of deep-rooted political instability, economic decay, and high exposure to extreme events, these countries have lost their resilience and ability to recover. In these contexts, humanitarian assistance alone cannot reverse underlying food insecurity dynamics. In this regard, the GRFC 2026 has included information about structural vulnerability from different sources, including two from the JRC: the Anomaly Hot Spot for Agricultural Production and the INFORM Risk index.

More than two-thirds of the total population experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity reported by the GRFC 2025 resided in just the 10 countries listed in the graph below, with Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Sudan alone representing nearly one-third of the total. 

Top ten countries with the largest number of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity.

The GRFC also reports on ‘nutrition crises’ and ‘nutrition concerns’ in countries/territories with food crises. In 2025, out of the 47 countries/territories with food crises and data meeting GRFC technical requirements, 23 countries/territories experienced a nutrition crisis, and 3 were nutrition concerns. Palestine (Gaza Strip), the Sudan, Myanmar and South Sudan experienced the most severe nutrition crises in 2025.

In 2025, an estimated 35.5 million children aged 6-59 months suffered from acute malnutrition: of these, 10 million had severe acute malnutrition and needed urgent treatment. About 9.2 million women -either pregnant or breastfeeding and living in 21 of the 47 food crises-stricken countries/territories – were acutely malnourished.

Figure 1- Number of children aged 6-59 months with acute malnutrition in 23 countries/territories with nutrition crises, 2025

The GRFC identifies the drivers that have most significant impact on acute food insecurity for each country or territory. In 2025, the report considers again conflict and insecurity as the major driver of food crisis. In 12 of the 33 countries, conflict and insecurity have remained the primary drivers for more than 5 years since 2016 while other eight countries have been affected by conflict and insecurity in some form over the past decade.

There is a strong overlap between displacement and acute food insecurity. Forcibly displaced people include refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons (IDPs) who flee conflict, insecurity and natural hazards. Overall, 86% of all forcibly displaced persons were in countries/territories with food crises. In 2025, displaced populations were either among those experiencing Catastrophe (IPC/CH Phase 5) or heavily concentrated in areas where Phase 5 populations lived.

Conflict and insecurity were the main drivers of displacement for nearly three-quarters of IDPs in countries with food crises (73% across 23 countries).