China’s nuclear stockpile climbs to 620 warheads, SIPRI says

China’s nuclear weapon stockpile grew to an estimated 620 warheads as of January 2026, up from about 600 a year earlier, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s newly published World Nuclear Forces assessment. SIPRI researchers Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda say the increase is part of a broader expansion that shows no sign of slowing.

The stockpile remains far smaller than those of the United States and Russia, which together hold roughly 86 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads. But China now operates more land-based intercontinental ballistic missile launchers than either country, and SIPRI projects it could match their ICBM numbers by the end of the decade.

Most of China’s arsenal is still kept separate from its launchers, a long-standing peacetime practice meant to prevent accidental or unauthorized use. That may be starting to change. The U.S. Department of Defense has reported that China appears to be mating warheads with missiles in a few mobile battalions during exercises, a departure from the de-mated posture it has maintained for decades. The Pentagon also assessed in 2025 that China had loaded more than 100 missiles into three newly built silo fields, though there is no public evidence those missiles carry live warheads. U.S. officials have separately told SIPRI’s authors, on condition of anonymity, that a Chinese ballistic missile submarine on deterrence patrol may be carrying nuclear-armed missiles.

Based on these assessments, SIPRI estimates China may have deployed a small number of warheads with operational forces, perhaps as many as 34, as of January 2026. The vast majority of the arsenal remains in central and regional storage.

China put several previously unseen nuclear-capable systems on display at its September 2025 Victory Day parade in Beijing. These included a silo-loading vehicle for the DF-31B intercontinental ballistic missile and a new DF-61 ICBM launcher that SIPRI says closely resembles the existing DF-41. The parade also featured JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, which China has fitted to upgraded Type 094A ballistic missile submarines, and a JL-1 air-launched ballistic missile shown publicly for the first time.

“China’s early warning infrared satellites can reportedly detect an incoming ICBM within 90 seconds of launch with an early warning alert sent to a command center within three to four minutes,” the Pentagon said in its 2025 report on Chinese military power, as cited by SIPRI.

That capability points to what the U.S. Department of Defense calls an “early warning counterstrike” strategy, a launch posture similar to those long used by Russia and the United States. SIPRI notes the approach would let Beijing fire a retaliatory strike before an incoming attack detonates, provided the warning data can be confirmed through a second, independent detection method.

Despite the shift toward faster reaction times, China has continued to publicly affirm its no-first-use policy, most recently in a white paper on arms control released in November 2025. Beijing has held that position since testing its first nuclear device in 1964.

China is also working on a next-generation Type 096 submarine to eventually replace its current Jin-class boats, though SIPRI says that program appears to be running behind schedule. On the delivery side, the country is developing a new strategic bomber intended to carry the JL-1 missile shown at the parade, and it increased the number of dual-capable DF-26 intermediate-range missile launchers in its inventory during 2025 while also fielding a conventional anti-ship variant of the same missile.

China has had the technical means to fit multiple warheads on a single missile since the early 1980s but did not do so until 2014, when it added multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles to the DF-5B. It extended that capability to the DF-41 in 2020. SIPRI notes that China appears not to have deployed MIRVs as widely as its technology would allow, including on the missiles loaded into its new silo fields.

SIPRI’s tables list China’s stockpile as split across roughly 20 nuclear-capable H-6N bombers, land-based missile forces with 775 launchers carrying an estimated 509 warheads, and 72 submarine-launched missiles carrying 72 warheads, with about 19 additional warheads believed to be in reserve for systems approaching operational status. The institute cautions that its estimates of Chinese deployment levels carry considerable uncertainty, given Beijing’s limited public disclosure of its nuclear forces.