US Spends 3.17% of GDP on Defence While Five NATO Allies Pass 3.5% in the Alliance's 2026 Estimates

The United States will spend about 3.17% of its GDP on core defence in 2026, according to NATO’s estimates, and still accounts for about 60% of all spending in the alliance. A year after allies agreed at The Hague to spend 5% of GDP on defence by 2035, five of them already spend more than 3.5% on core defence, a bigger share of their economies than the US. Most of the big Western European economies are somewhere between 2% and 2.7%.

The figures came out in early July 2026, ahead of NATO’s summit in Ankara.

The front line leads

Four of the five above 3.5% border Russia or Belarus. Greece is the fifth:

Lithuania is at 5.33% of GDP, Estonia 5.1%, Latvia 4.92%, Poland 4.68% and Greece 3.65%.

Denmark, Norway and Sweden are also above 3%, according to Estonia’s International Centre for Defence and Security.

Then the large economies. The United States is at 3.17%. Germany is at 2.69%, Britain 2.56%, France 2.22%, Italy and Portugal 2.1%, and Belgium 2.0%. Taken together, European allies and Canada average 2.53%.

The money has grown fast all the same. NATO’s annual report in March 2026 said European and Canadian spending rose 20% in real terms in 2025, and that every ally reached 2% of GDP for the first time. Canada spent just over C$63 billion in 2025, its first year at 2% since 1990. The US still accounts for about 60% of all alliance spending.

How the 5% works

The Hague declaration of June 2025 split the target. At least 3.5% of GDP goes on core defence as NATO defines it. Up to 1.5% can go on related spending: protecting infrastructure, civil resilience and the defence industrial base. Direct support to Ukraine counts. Each ally has to submit an annual plan showing a credible, step-by-step path to 2035, and the whole trajectory gets reviewed in 2029.

That design gives governments room. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in July that if core and related spending are added together, European allies and Canada already reach 4%, and that they will spend an extra $258 billion across 2025 and 2026.

Spain says no

Spain is the open dissenter. At The Hague, Pedro Sánchez said Spain wouldn’t go to 5% and could meet its capability commitments at 2.1%. In July 2026 Madrid repeated that the target was incompatible with Spain’s welfare state and public finances, pointing out that its military investment has tripled since 2018 to reach 2%.

Spain’s argument is that NATO’s real commitments are capability targets, the forces and equipment each ally promises to provide, and that a GDP percentage is a proxy. Most allies accept the proxy because it’s simple to measure and hard to argue with in public.

What the numbers don’t show

Percentages flatter small economies and hide scale. Germany at 2.69% spends far more in euros than Lithuania at 5.33%. And spending isn’t capability. A budget that buys ammunition and air defence quickly adds more than one that pays for long-delayed national programmes.

That’s the European problem in a sentence: money is rising faster than the capacity to spend it well. The fragmentation of Europe’s defence market, with many more weapon types in service than the US, means a lot of the new money goes on small national orders. Brussels’ new SAFE loans are designed to push joint buying. Whether they do will decide how much of the jump from 2% toward 3.5% turns into real military power.

The next check is NATO’s 2027 report, and the first annual plans under the Hague trajectory.