“According to the V-Dem Democracy Report 2026, liberal democracies fell from a peak of 45 in 2009 to 31 in 2025, electoral democracies rose from 46 to 56, closed autocracies rose from 22 in 2019 to 35 in 2025, and electoral autocracy (57 countries) remains the most common regime type.”

Context. V-Dem recalculates its whole dataset each year, so earlier years' counts can differ between report editions.