Donate

Missing migrants

Mediterranean deaths and disappearances

At least 2,185 people died or went missing in the Mediterranean in 2025. Between the start of 2026 and 24 February the Missing Migrants Project of the International Organization for Migration recorded another 606, a number the organization described as unprecedented for the first two months of a year.

Mediterranean · Sea routes

Annual deaths and disappearances in the Mediterranean, 2014 to 2025, drawn from the open Missing Migrants Project dataset as updated in late September 2026. Recent years are revised as late reports arrive, so the last bar can differ from the totals quoted in the text.

Annual deaths and disappearances in the Mediterranean, 2014 to 2025, drawn from the open Missing Migrants Project dataset as updated in late September 2026. Recent years are revised as late reports arrive, so the last bar can differ from the totals quoted in the text.

Chart by Fix Planet from Missing Migrants Project data of the International Organization for Migration, via the Humanitarian Data Exchange, licence Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/). Dataset page: https://data.humdata.org/dataset/missing-migrants-project-data

What it is

The Mediterranean total counts people who died or went missing on the three main sea routes to Europe: the central route towards Italy, the western route towards Spain and the eastern route towards Greece. In February 2026 the Missing Migrants Project of the International Organization for Migration reported that at least 2,185 people died or went missing there in 2025, a full calendar year. It also reported 606 recorded from the start of 2026 to 24 February, a stretch of about eight weeks. The two figures cover different periods, so each stands on its own.

Why it matters

According to the organization's annual report, sea routes to Europe, including the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands, accounted for about 3,400 deaths and disappearances in 2025, or 43 percent of the global total. The largest share, 1,330, was on the central Mediterranean route. Deaths in early 2026 were at an unprecedented level even as fewer people arrived in Italy: over the same timeframe, arrivals in Italy fell from 6,358 to 2,465, a drop of 61 percent.

How to read it

The figure of 2,185 is the total for the calendar year 2025. The figure of 606 covers about eight weeks of 2026 and is likely to be revised. For comparison, in the open Missing Migrants Project dataset the same dates, 1 January to 24 February, add up to between 229 and 483 in each year from 2015 to 2025, so 606 is higher than in any of those years. The dataset's own count for 1 January to 24 February 2026 is now 607.

Limits

The organization says that restricted access to search and rescue information on sea routes to Europe left an exceptionally high number of cases unverified in 2025. At least 270 human remains washed ashore on Mediterranean coasts in 2025 without being linked to a known shipwreck, and reports of hundreds more people missing at sea in early 2026 had not yet been verified. The totals therefore count verified cases and are best read as a minimum.

Sources