What Changed in the IMF's October 2026 Government Debt Data

The IMF published its October 2026 World Economic Outlook on October 13, and this site re-based its counters to the new figures on October 15 and 16. For most of the 137 governments tracked here the update was a rounding exercise: the median change in starting debt was 0.3%. For a handful it was not. Below is what moved, what caused it, and which changes were the IMF revising its own numbers rather than this site correcting its own.

The world total barely moved

This dataset now puts world government debt at $111.65 trillion at the end of 2025, against $111.50 trillion before, and its projected pace of new borrowing at $274,561 per second, down from $279,686. A slightly higher starting point and a slower climb nearly cancel out: the world counter today differs by 0.02% from what the April figures would show.

The slower climb does shift the round-number crossings, though only by a day or two:

Neither column is a measurement; both are the same straight-line model run through two sets of official figures. The gap between them is a fair guide to how soft any single crossing date is. Our $118 trillion piece carries the full reconciliation.

The IMF's biggest revisions

These are changes the IMF itself made between April and October — the same series, for the same year-end, in two successive editions. Only ten countries moved by more than 5%:

Norway is the outlier. The IMF raised its end-2025 estimate by 20%, lifting the ratio to 54% of GDP from 45%, and it now projects Norway's debt to fall in 2026 in kroner as well as in dollars, so the counter ticks down. Norway's gross debt has always sat beside a sovereign wealth fund many times larger, which is why we treat it as a case where the gross figure is not the whole story.

Taiwan moved for a different reason. The April edition contained a one-year jump of about 31% in Taiwan's series between 2025 and 2026, caused by a change of definition, which this site had stepped around. The October edition no longer contains the jump, so Taiwan's counter now follows the standard method.

Where the pace changed more than the level

For the largest economies the starting figures barely moved; what changed was the projected speed of borrowing. Reading it in each country's own currency separates real borrowing from exchange-rate projections:

• China: $99,328 per second, up from $89,129. In yuan the IMF projects slightly less new borrowing than in April (-4%); a firmer yuan is what lifts the dollar figure.
• Japan: the dollar figure falls faster, by about $14,648 per second. In yen the debt is still rising, but more slowly than April projected (-28%), and the IMF expects a weaker yen.
• Canada: $7,654 per second, up 69%. In Canadian dollars the projected pace rises even more (+188%), so this is real borrowing, not currency.
• India: down 53% in dollars, to $2,518 per second, while the pace in rupees is almost unchanged (-3%). That is the rupee projection, not less borrowing.
• Russia: up 102% in dollars and 73% in roubles — a genuine acceleration.

Ten countries that moved because this site switched sources

Not every large move was an IMF revision. Ten countries were sourced elsewhere before October because the IMF's figure was missing, lacked a projection, or pointed the wrong way. The October edition fixed that, so they now follow the IMF like everyone else. Their moves reflect the change of source, not new information about their debt. The five that moved by more than 10%:

Libya is the largest: the earlier figure came from the World Bank, whose estimate was far lower than the IMF's, and post-conflict fiscal fragmentation makes every estimate for Libya uncertain. Argentina, Iran, Laos and Papua New Guinea also gained figures in their own currencies, because their dollar totals now fall only on projected exchange-rate moves while their debt in local currency rises — their pages say so rather than reporting repayment.

Lebanon moved the other way, to $48.1 billion, about 139% of GDP. The earlier figure was the pre-crisis dollar value of the debt. Lebanon's pound has been devalued from 1,507 to 89,500 per dollar, which cut the dollar value of everything owed in pounds; the IMF's estimate reflects that. It publishes no projection for Lebanon, so the counter still does not move.

Two corrections of our own

The European Union. The EU figure on this site did not equal the sum of its own members: it showed $15.88 trillion, growing at 17,000 dollars a second, while the 27 member states summed to more and grew faster. It is now derived from them — $17.59 trillion, growing at $46,473 per second — and can no longer drift.

Population. Per-person figures now divide by the IMF's own population estimate from the same edition, cross-checked against the World Bank's. The previous populations were typed in by hand, and 34 countries were more than 10% out of date. Where the IMF counts only the people a government actually serves — Ukraine's government-controlled areas, the Republic of Cyprus — its figure is kept, because that is the right denominator for that government's debt.

What did not change

The method is the same: each country's end-2025 debt, growing at the IMF's projected 2026 pace. The United States stays on the Treasury's own figures, which the counter had tracked to within 0.1% since April. China stays on the narrow general-government basis; the IMF's broader "augmented" measure is much higher, as our LGFV explainer sets out. And six counters still do not move, because no institution publishes a projection that could honestly be extrapolated: Venezuela, Lebanon, Cuba, Somalia, Yemen and Syria.

The next edition of the World Economic Outlook is due in April 2027. Every revision, including this one, is recorded in the changelog.