China installed six out of every ten new factory robots on Earth last year.
The International Federation of Robotics released its World Robotics 2026 report on September 24, 2026. It found factories worldwide installed 603,000 industrial robots in 2025, an 11% increase from the prior year. China accounted for 354,000 of those installations, or 59% of the global total, while installations in the European Union fell 11% over the same period. The total number of robots operating in factories worldwide climbed 9% to a record 5 million.
The gap says less about robots and more about where manufacturing capacity is being built and modernized. China is compounding an automation lead while a shrinking installation base in the EU hints at either tighter capital budgets or work migrating to more automated competitors elsewhere.
A report titled World Robotics tends to read like a trade newsletter, but the numbers here are blunt: one country installed more new factory robots than the rest of the world combined.