Data Revisions & Changelog
Figures on this site change when the underlying sources change. This page records those revisions with dates, so a number quoted last week can be traced to the vintage it came from. For how the figures are built in the first place, see the methodology page.
24 August 2026 — world aggregate reconciled to its own components
The world total is now derived, and constrained, so that it cannot fall behind the countries it is made of. This corrects a flaw in the 19 August revision below.
That revision fixed the world level but not the world rate. The world figure grew at $227,778 per second while the 137 tracked sovereigns grew at a combined $278,148 per second — about 18% faster. A whole that grows more slowly than the sum of its parts is overtaken eventually, and it was: the crossover happened around 20 August 2026, four days before this entry. For roughly five days the site showed a world total marginally smaller than the countries listed beneath it, by about $0.02 trillion.
The aggregate is now rebuilt from its components rather than carried as a standalone number:
- Level. $111.497 trillion at 1 January 2026 — the 137 tracked sovereigns ($111.204T) plus the 58 further WEO reporters not tracked individually ($0.293T).
- Rate. $279,686 per second — the sum of all 195 component rates, so the margin over the tracked set can only widen.
- Debt-to-GDP. 95% to 94%, recomputed against summed WEO nominal GDP on the same 195-reporter footprint. This figure is now stated as derived from this dataset rather than attributed to the IMF Fiscal Monitor, which measures a different country set.
The baseline fell by about $0.7 trillion, because the previous non-tracked remainder ($1.01T) was larger than re-derivation from the WEO supports ($0.29T). The displayed figure rose, because the corrected growth rate more than offsets the lower starting point — roughly $117.2 trillion at the time of this change, against $116.9 trillion for the summed countries.
The consistency checker that runs before every deploy now treats both conditions as hard failures: the world total may never be smaller than the sum of its tracked members, and the world rate may never be slower than their combined rate. The first condition was previously a warning that was allowed to fail; that is how this went unnoticed. It can no longer ship.
19 August 2026 — baselines re-based to the IMF World Economic Outlook (April 2026)
The largest revision this site has made. Baselines for 119 of 137 sovereigns were re-derived from the IMF World Economic Outlook (April 2026), general government gross debt.
Two things changed at once:
- Precision. Many smaller economies previously carried figures rounded to one or two significant digits — Algeria was stored as exactly $40,000,000,000. Those roundings were often materially wrong, and in some cases contradicted the debt-to-GDP ratio shown on the same page.
- Anchoring. The WEO reports debt as a stock at end-of-period. Baselines are now the end-2025 stock, anchored to 1 January 2026 and growing at the projected 2026 accumulation, so a figure shown today is a genuine within-year interpolation rather than a year-end number displayed early.
88 countries moved by more than 10%. The 14 that moved by more than a factor of two:
| Country | Previous | Revised | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Algeria | $40.0B | $154.6B | 3.87× |
| Trinidad & Tobago | $6.0B | $21.8B | 3.63× |
| Senegal | $15.0B | $48.3B | 3.22× |
| Slovenia | $18.0B | $52.5B | 2.91× |
| Burkina Faso | $5.0B | $14.1B | 2.82× |
| Ivory Coast | $20.0B | $55.7B | 2.78× |
| Kenya | $35.0B | $94.6B | 2.70× |
| Bolivia | $22.0B | $54.5B | 2.48× |
| Suriname | $2.0B | $4.9B | 2.47× |
| Uganda | $15.0B | $35.8B | 2.39× |
| Dominican Republic | $32.0B | $75.5B | 2.36× |
| Chad | $3.0B | $6.7B | 2.24× |
| Singapore | $480.0B | $1,058.1B | 2.20× |
| Bangladesh | $90.0B | $192.5B | 2.14× |
These revisions make the figures more accurate, not less. If you cited a previous figure, it is not retracted — it was the best estimate on the vintage then published — but the current figure is better sourced.
The world total
The world figure moved from approximately $100 trillion to $112.2 trillion (end-2025 basis). The previous figure had fallen behind: the sum of the individual countries tracked on this site already exceeded it, which is arithmetically impossible. The world total is now derived as the sum of the 137 tracked sovereigns plus the 59 further countries reporting to the WEO. World debt-to-GDP moved from 94% to 95% — the ratio was always about right; the absolute level was stale.
Countries deliberately not re-based
- United States — remains on the US Treasury “total public debt” basis, with a growth rate from the CBO deficit projection. Both are US-official sources and both are now stated on the page.
- Japan — re-based, but note that its debt rises in yen while its US-dollar figure falls, because the yen is weakening faster than the debt grows. That is an exchange-rate effect, not repayment, and the page says so.
- Taiwan — the WEO series contains a definition change between 2025 and 2026 (local-currency debt jumps about 31% in one year). The baseline uses the published end-2025 stock, but the growth rate is taken from 2026–27 so a definitional step is not displayed as borrowing.
- Sudan — adopted the WEO figure ($74.5B, 188% of GDP), replacing a previously reconciled estimate. Its public finances remain highly uncertain.
- Eighteen countries are not on the April 2026 WEO vintage — the United States by design, and the rest for lack of usable data and retain earlier figures. Every country page now states which basis it is on.
Also changed
- Growth rates. 34 sovereigns previously had a rate of zero, so their counters never moved and their pages read “growing at $0/second”. 26 now carry rates derived from the WEO debt path. The remaining 8 — all conflict or crisis states with no usable projection — state plainly that no estimate is published rather than showing a placeholder.
- Local currency. 116 countries can now be viewed in their own currency. Both series come from the same WEO vintage, so the implied exchange rate is the source’s own rather than one applied by this site.
- Provenance. Every country page, and the API, now state the baseline behind that specific figure.
Earlier
Revisions before August 2026 were made against IMF and national-treasury releases without an itemised public record. This page begins that record; future reviews, including the next scheduled one in October 2026, will be logged here. Last updated 21 August 2026.