What is the divorce rate in the UK?
There were 105,002 divorces in England and Wales in 2025, and the divorce rate for opposite-sex couples was 8.4 per 1,000 married people, according to the ONS Divorces and dissolutions in England and Wales: 2024 and 2025, published on 23 September 2026. That is similar to 2023 and 2024 and well below the peak of 14.2 per 1,000 in 1993.
The ONS estimates that 16.3% of couples who married in 2015 had divorced before their tenth anniversary, compared with 24.7% of those married in 1995. The median length of marriages ending in divorce was 13.0 years, the longest since 1963.
Often-quoted lines such as "half of marriages end in divorce" are not an ONS statistic; the ONS publishes the share divorced by each anniversary for each marriage year. Scotland and Northern Ireland publish their own figures.
When is the next figure out?
The ONS pre-announces population and vital statistics releases on its release calendar and publishes at 9:30am or 7am. Births data for England and Wales come out in two stages each year: counts in the spring and final fertility rates in late summer or autumn. Mid-year estimates appear in the summer or autumn after the reference year, and marriage statistics about two years after the year they cover. NRS and NISRA publish quarterly vital events tables and their own annual reports.
Every official release due in the next two weeks is on the release calendar.
Where the figures come from
- UK population and vital statistics (ONS, National Records of Scotland and NISRA)Where to find official UK figures on births, fertility, baby names, marriage, divorce, households, population estimates, projections and the census.
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This answer says where the official figures are published and how they are defined. It gives no verdict on any claim. To report an error, send a correction request. More questions about population, births and families: all Population, births and families questions.