Updates

The 2019 revision of population data from the UN Population Division has been incorporated into WRD and reconciled with religious affiliation data in every country.

While the UN's 2021 revision is also now imminent, the significant demographic effects of COVID-19 are unlikely to be seen until at least the 2023 revision.

Update: The UN has pushed back the date of the next population revision from June 2021 to March 2022, with Urban prospects now not planned until 2023.

The base year of the World Religion Database has been updated from mid-2015 to mid-2020.

This means that estimates for the number of religionists in every country of the world are now reconciled with the United Nations population projections for mid-2020. The update includes statistics on all world religions as well as Peoples and Countries preliminary data on Cities and Provinces.

Unless labelled otherwise, all data in WRD now refer to 2020.