US factory robot installs pass Japan for second place, but China installed nine times more

IFR's World Robotics 2026 counts 354,000 installations in China, 59% of the global total, against almost 38,500 in the US.

The United States installed almost 38,500 industrial robots in 2025, up 12% on the year, passing Japan to become the world's second-largest market for factory robots. The figures come from the International Federation of Robotics' World Robotics 2026 report, published September 24.

The milestone says more about the gap behind it than the rank itself. China installed 354,000 industrial robots in 2025, up 20% and a record high: 59% of every robot installed worldwide, and about 9.2 times the US total. Japan installed 36,219 units, down 19%, slipping from second to third. The US and Japan combined installed about 74,700 units, roughly a fifth of China's total. South Korea, the fourth-largest market, installed 30,000 units, down 1%.

Chinese robot makers delivered about 195,000 units in their home market, up 15%, but their share of it slipped from 57% in 2024 to 55% in 2025: foreign manufacturers grew faster in China than domestic ones did. Globally, factories installed more than 600,000 industrial robots in 2025, up 11%, taking the total number operating worldwide to about 5 million, more than double the level of seven years ago. "Industrial automation is progressing at high speed," said IFR president Jane Heffner. IFR expects installations to rise another 9% in 2026, to 655,000 units.

The numbers count new installations, not the robots already running in factories, and they cover industrial robots, the arms on production lines, not humanoids or service robots. Annual installations are also not a direct measure of how automated a country's manufacturing is. The ranking is still a useful baseline: the US is gaining ground on Japan, but the distance to China widened in absolute terms in 2025, and the next test is whether US growth holds as reshoring pushes more automation into American factories.