US overtakes Japan to become second-largest user of industrial robots
25 September 2026 
The US has overtaken Japan to become the world’s second-largest user of industrial robots, according to the latest figures from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR). The US installed 38,400 robots in 2025 – 12% more than the previous year, and exceeding Japan’s total of 36,200 installations in 2025 (a 19% drop from 2024).
Automotive applications accounted for 13,500 of the new robots installed in the US in 2025, far exceeding the 3,000 installed in the metal and machinery sector, and the 2,900 installed in food and beverage plants.
In 2025, China pulled even further ahead as the world’s biggest user of industrial robots with 354,000 new installations – 20% more than the previous year. China now accounts for 59% of the world’s total installed base of industrial robots. Most of its new robots (55%) were supplied by Chinese domestic manufacturers, with their installations totalling 195,000 in 2025 – a 15% increase.
The IFR believes that the Chinese market is far from saturation, and it expects sales to grow by an average of 5–10% each year in the period to 2029.
According to the IFR, there are now more than five million industrial robots in use around the world, with 600,000 new machines being installed last year – 11% more than in 2024.
“Industrial automation is progressing at high speed,” says IFR president, Jane Heffner. “The new mark of five million robots operational in factories worldwide is more than double the number seven years ago. The strongest growth is taking place in Asia, followed by Americas. Europe is moving ahead more slowly.”
The Republic of Korea remained the fourth-largest market for industrial robots in 2025 with 30,000 extra machines being installed. Annual installations have remained largely flat at around 31,000 per year since 2019, and slipped slightly by 1% last year. However, new investments from the automotive industry are expected to take effect in 2027 and 2028, with a resulting expansion in the number of robots installed.
India installed almost 10,500 robots in 2025 (a 15% increase) and is now the world’s sixth-largest market, behind Germany. Between 2020 and 2025, India’s installations grew by an average of 27% per year.
Germany is still the world’s fifth-largest robot market, and by far the largest in Europe, accounting for 41% of all of the robots in use in the EU. However, German sales fell by 8% last year, to fewer than 25,000. The automotive industry is still Germany’s biggest buyer of industrial robots, but its share shrank to 23% last year (a 17% decline), followed closely by the metals industry on 21% (a 13% decline).
The number of new installations in Italy, Europe’s second-largest market, fell by 11% to around 7,800. France is back in third place with almost 4,500 new robots (an 8% decline since 2024), ahead of Spain with on 4,300 (a 15% decrease).
Automotive applications are becoming a smaller part of the industrial robot market. In 2015, the automotive sector was the biggest buyer of robots, accounting for 38% of all robots sold that year. By last year, however, this share had shrunk to 23% – even through the number of robots bought by the automotive sector grew from 97,533 to 138,429 over this period.
“General industrial” applications now account for more than half of all sales (53%, or 322,643 machines) up from 26% (64,555 machines) in 2015. The proportion of robots bought for electronics applications has fallen from 36% in 2015 to 24% last year – although the numbers sold to this sector increased from 91,660 to 142,235.
China is pulling further ahead in its dominance of the global industrial robots market (Source: IFR)Cobots (collaborative robots) still represent a fairly small share of the total industrial robot market, dipping slightly from 11.5% in 2024 to 11% in 2025. The number of cobots sold rose from 62,136 in 2024 to 66,240 last year.
Although nearly 7,000 humanoid robots were sold worldwide in 2025, the IFR says we are still at the stage where humanoids are making the leap from laboratories to pilot projects. They face major challenges in terms of safety and functional reliability, a lack of training data, and a lack of a viable business case. The Federation has identified 174 humanoid robot manufacturers worldwide – more than half of them in China – demonstrating the substantial investments and innovation taking place in this field.
The IFR expects the global demand for robots to continue to grow and predicts that the number of installations will rise by 9% to 655,000 in 2026, and reach 806,000 by 2029.
Structural drivers such as demographic change will continue to support demand, while technological progress is expanding the range of feasible and economically viable applications. In particular, advances in AI, machine vision and sensing are expanding robots’ capabilities, while easier programming and system integration are cutting deployment costs and opening up automation to new applications and customers.
In the world of service robots, IFR reports that 250,000 machines – including AMRs (autonomous mobile robots) – were sold last year. This is a 24% increase on the figure for 2024.
Transport and logistics accounted for almost half (47%) of all service robot sales last year, with 117,488 being installed in this sector. The next-largest sector is hospitality, accounting for 22% of sales, followed by cleaning applications on 18%.
Just 6,467 robots were sold for inspection and maintenance duties last year, representing 3% of all service robot sales. But this represents an 83% increase on 2024, so it is an application area that is expanding rapidly.
