How many people are diagnosed with cancer each year in the US?
About 2.1 million. The forecast for 2026 is 2,114,850 new cancer cases in the United States and 626,140 deaths from cancer. NCI's SEER program publishes those two numbers, but the American Cancer Society is what produces them.
Two NCI pages, two different numbers
If you search this, you will hit both figures, so here is the reason. NCI's main Cancer Statistics overview still shows an update date of May 7, 2025, and as of August 18, 2026 it still carries the 2025 estimates: 2,041,910 new cases and 618,120 deaths. SEER's Cancer Stat Facts page carries the 2026 estimates above. Both sets are American Cancer Society projections that NCI republishes; the pages differ only in which annual edition they have picked up. The SEER figures are the newer set.
The same gap shows up in lifetime risk. The overview page says about 38.9% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point, using 2018 to 2021 data, with 2020 left out because of COVID. SEER now says about 39.2%, using 2021 to 2023 data. Neither is wrong. One is simply more recent.
Counts of people living after a diagnosis differ the same way. The overview page reports 18.1 million cancer survivors as of January 2022, and projects 26 million by 2040. SEER estimates 18,640,213 people living with cancer in the United States in 2023.
Who those cases happen to
Cancer is mostly a disease of later life. The median age at diagnosis is 67, and 30.8% of new cases are found in people aged 65 to 74. The median age at death from cancer is 73.
By estimated new cases, the most common cancers are breast, prostate, lung and bronchus, colon and rectum, melanoma of the skin, and bladder. The same lagging overview page puts prostate, lung, and colorectal cancer at an estimated 48% of diagnoses in men for 2025, and breast, lung, and colorectal at an estimated 51% in women.
Children are a small share. For 2025, the latest year the overview page gives, an estimated 14,690 children and teens aged 0 to 19 were expected to be diagnosed and 1,650 to die.
Worldwide, the International Agency for Research on Cancer counted almost 20 million new cases and 9.7 million cancer deaths in 2022. By 2050 the projections rise to 33 million new cases a year.
New cases are flat while deaths fall
The two trends move differently, and that is the interesting part.
Age-adjusted rates of new cancer cases have been stable from 2014 to 2023. Age-adjusted death rates have been falling by about 1.5% a year from 2015 to 2024. The current cancer death rate is 143.2 per 100,000 people per year, based on 2020 to 2024 deaths. Five-year relative survival across all cancers is 70.5%, based on people diagnosed from 2016 to 2022.
When deaths fall while new cases hold steady, it usually points to better treatment and earlier detection rather than to fewer people getting cancer. It also explains why the number of survivors keeps climbing.
What the number does not tell you
These figures describe populations, not people. They cannot say whether you will get cancer, and they cannot tell someone already diagnosed what will happen next. SEER says outright that survival statistics cannot predict what will happen to any one patient, because no two patients are alike. The five-year figure also covers people diagnosed between 2016 and 2022, so it trails today's treatment.
Rates also differ sharply by group. NCI reports the cancer death rate is highest in non-Hispanic Black men, at 203.6 per 100,000, and lowest in non-Hispanic Asian and Pacific Islander women, at 83.1 per 100,000. Our overview of cancer statistics explains how these figures are built, and the piece on cancer risk factors covers what actually shifts an individual's odds.
Sources
Want the full picture? Read our complete explanation: Understanding Cancer Statistics
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