Global stock of industrial robots tops 5 million as China widens its lead, IFR reports

The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) published its World Robotics 2025 report this week, saying the number of industrial robots working in factories worldwide rose 9% to a record 5 million units. The increase was driven by a strong year for new installations, which climbed 11% to more than 600,000 units, according to the report.

China remained the dominant force behind that growth. The country installed about 354,000 new industrial robots in 2025, roughly 20% more than the year before, and now accounts for 59% of all robots installed globally in a single year. The IFR said China's automotive, electronics and metal-working sectors were the biggest sources of demand.

Behind China, the ranking of the next-largest markets shifted. The United States installed about 38,400 robots in 2025, up 12% year over year, overtaking Japan, whose installations fell roughly 19% to about 36,200 units. The IFR said US demand was led by the automotive sector, followed by the metal and machinery, and food and beverage industries, and that 2025 was the country's third-strongest year on record behind 2018 and 2022.

Regionally, Asia continued to install robots faster than any other part of the world, followed by the Americas, while Europe's growth was described as more modest by comparison. The IFR's figures show a global industry still concentrated in a small number of countries even as overall adoption spreads.

Looking ahead, the IFR forecasts installations will keep climbing, reaching about 655,000 units in 2026 and passing 800,000 units by 2029. The federation pointed to labor shortages in manufacturing, rising wages in China, and growing use of AI-linked vision and control systems as reasons factories keep adding robots rather than slowing down after a decade of rapid growth.

The report underlines how much of the current robotics boom is still concentrated in traditional factory automation rather than the humanoid and mobile robots that dominate recent headlines. Even so, the same underlying trends, cheaper hardware, better sensors and increasingly capable AI software, are pushing both categories forward at the same time.