IFR: Industrial robots operating in factories reached 5 million in 2025

The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) said in its World Robotics 2026 report, presented in Frankfurt on 24 September 2026, that the operational stock of industrial robots in factories worldwide rose 9 percent to a record 5 million units in 2025. New installations grew 11 percent to more than 600,000 units in the same year.

• China: 354,000 units, up 20 percent, or about 59 percent of global installations.
• United States: almost 38,500 units, up 12 percent; it overtook Japan as the second-largest market.
• Japan fell 19 percent to 36,219 units, and the Republic of Korea fell 1 percent to about 30,000 units.
• Installations in Germany fell 8 percent to fewer than 25,000 units, but the country still took about 41 percent of EU installations. India ranked sixth with almost 10,500 units.

The IFR forecasts a 9 percent rise to 655,000 installations in 2026 and 806,000 in 2029. In the federation's view, growth in Europe lags behind Asia and the Americas: Italy fell 11 percent to about 7,800 units and France fell 8 percent to almost 4,500 units. China, the United States and India are named as growth markets.

Why it matters

The IFR release does not mention Türkiye separately. The slowdown in Europe and the fast growth in China and the United States show that automation investment is moving at different speeds across regions; for Turkish manufacturers selling into Europe, this could mean shifting competitive conditions. For a factory considering robots, a sensible first step could be to see which lines carry repetitive work and how well production data is collected. Connecting machine data to planning and ERP systems can make the return on a robot easier to measure.

For general information on digitizing production processes, see our digital transformation page.