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Data

Nuclear weapons tests per year

What you should know about this indicator

  • The number of nuclear tests for the United States does not include the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
  • This data only includes nuclear tests announced or reported by governments and/or intergovernmental organizations.
  • This data does not include the "Vela Incident" of 1979 because it has not yet officially been declared a nuclear test explosion by any government or intergovernmental organization, although there is strong evidence that suggests it was.
  • India's three simultaneous nuclear test explosions on May 11 are counted as only one, as are the two explosions on May 13. Likewise, Pakistan's five simultaneous explosions on May 28 are counted as a single test.
Source
Arms Control Association (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 13, 2026
Next expected update
May 2027
Date range
1945–2024
Unit
tests

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Arms Control Association – The Nuclear Testing Tally

This dataset provides the yearly number of nuclear weapons tests by country.

Retrieved on
May 13, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nucleartesttally
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Arms Control Association - The Nuclear Testing Tally.
Daryl Kimball, Executive Director.

This dataset provides the yearly number of nuclear weapons tests by country.

Retrieved on
May 13, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nucleartesttally
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Arms Control Association - The Nuclear Testing Tally.
Daryl Kimball, Executive Director.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Nuclear weapons tests per year”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2024) - “Nuclear Weapons”. Data adapted from Arms Control Association. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260515-073320/grapher/number-of-nuclear-weapons-tests.html [online resource] (archived on May 15, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Arms Control Association (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Arms Control Association (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Nuclear weapons tests per year” [dataset]. Arms Control Association, “The Nuclear Testing Tally” [original data]. Retrieved May 15, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260515-073320/grapher/number-of-nuclear-weapons-tests.html (archived on May 15, 2026).

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