How Many People Die From Kidney Cancer Every Year?
Kidney cancer kills about 156,000 people a year, around 427 a day. Global, UK and US figures, risk factors, survival by stage and why it is often silent.
Picture a woman in her fifties having a CT scan after a fall from a bicycle. The doctors are checking for internal bleeding. There is none, and her ribs are only bruised. But the radiologist's report has an extra line at the bottom: a small mass on the left kidney, about three centimetres across. She had no symptoms at all. Without the fall, nobody would have looked.
Scenes like that are now one of the most common ways kidney cancer is found. A large share of kidney tumours are spotted by accident, on scans done for something else entirely. That is good news for the people whose cancer is caught early. It is also a clue to why kidney cancer is so dangerous for everyone else: when it does cause symptoms, it has often been growing quietly for years.
Every day around 170,000 people die worldwide from all causes, a number you can watch rising in real time on our live counter. This article looks at how many of them die from kidney cancer, where, and why.
The headline number
GLOBOCAN 2022, the global cancer estimates produced by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), recorded 155,953 deaths from kidney cancer worldwide in 2022. In the same year, 434,840 people were newly diagnosed, making kidney cancer the fourteenth most common cancer in the world.
| Time period | Kidney cancer deaths worldwide |
|---|---|
| Per year | 155,953 |
| Per month | about 13,000 |
| Per week | about 3,000 |
| Per day | about 427 |
| Per hour | about 18 |
| Per minute | one roughly every 3 minutes 22 seconds |
That is fewer than many other cancers, but it is still more than one person every few minutes, around the clock. And unlike some cancers, the number is set to climb steeply.
Cancer as a whole kills nearly 10 million people a year, as we break down in how many people die from cancer every day. Kidney cancer makes up about 1.6% of those deaths.
Kidney cancer is not the same as kidney disease
It is easy to mix the two up, but they are very different killers. Chronic kidney disease is the slow loss of kidney function, usually caused by diabetes and high blood pressure. It kills far more people than kidney cancer does, as we explain in how many people die from kidney disease every day.
Kidney cancer is a tumour, most often a type called renal cell carcinoma, which starts in the lining of the tiny tubes that filter the blood. A smaller share of cases start in the renal pelvis, the funnel where urine collects before it flows down to the bladder. Those are closer cousins of bladder cancer.
| Kidney cancer | Chronic kidney disease | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A malignant tumour in the kidney | Gradual loss of kidney function |
| Main causes | Smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, genetics | Diabetes, high blood pressure |
| Typical treatment | Surgery, targeted drugs, immunotherapy | Blood pressure and diabetes control, dialysis, transplant |
| Deaths worldwide per year | about 156,000 | about 1.4 million |
Where kidney cancer deaths happen
The countries with the most kidney cancer deaths are led by the giants of population, with the United States punching above its weight because of its older, heavier population and very high rate of diagnosis.
| Country | Kidney cancer deaths (2022) |
|---|---|
| China | 23,991 |
| United States | 14,295 |
| India | 10,464 |
| World | 155,953 |
Figures from GLOBOCAN 2022 as published by the World Cancer Research Fund.
Asia and Europe together account for more than 70% of kidney cancer deaths worldwide. Age-standardised rates are generally highest in Europe, especially in central and eastern European countries such as the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Latvia, which have long reported some of the highest rates of the disease. The global age-standardised death rate is about 1.5 per 100,000 people.
Richer countries tend to record more cases partly because they scan more. Every CT or ultrasound done for back pain or a stomach complaint is a chance to find a small kidney tumour by accident. That inflates incidence in high-income countries, but it also means more tumours are removed before they spread.
Men die from it twice as often
Kidney cancer is about twice as common in men as in women, and the death figures reflect that.
| Group | Deaths worldwide (GLOBOCAN 2022) | US deaths (ACS estimate) |
|---|---|---|
| Men | 100,343 | about 10,200 |
| Women | about 55,600 | about 4,960 |
| Total | 155,953 | about 15,160 |
Part of the gap comes from smoking, which men did more of for most of the last century. Workplace exposures, higher rates of high blood pressure in middle-aged men, and differences in body fat distribution are also thought to play a role. As with many diseases, this adds to the wider story of why men die younger than women.
Kidney cancer in the UK
Cancer Research UK puts UK kidney cancer deaths at around 5,200 a year on its latest figures, which is about 14 every day. Kidney cancer is the 11th most common cause of cancer death in the UK.
| UK kidney cancer measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Deaths per year (latest CRUK figures) | around 5,100 to 5,200 | Cancer Research UK |
| Deaths per day | about 14 | Cancer Research UK |
| Deaths per year in 2017 to 2019 | around 4,700 | Cancer Research UK |
| Change in death rates since the early 1970s | up by about 79% | Cancer Research UK |
| Change in death rates in the last decade | up by about 5% | Cancer Research UK |
| Projected deaths per year by 2038 to 2040 | around 6,500 | Cancer Research UK |
| Cases linked to overweight and obesity | about 24% | Cancer Research UK |
That long-term rise in death rates is unusual. For many cancers, UK death rates have been falling for decades. Kidney cancer has gone the other way, and the most common explanation is the rise in obesity. More cases are also being diagnosed through scans, but that alone would tend to improve survival rather than raise death rates.
The UK picture fits into the wider list of leading causes of death in the UK.
Kidney cancer in the United States
The American Cancer Society's latest estimate is about 15,160 deaths from kidney and renal pelvis cancer in the United States, roughly 42 a day. GLOBOCAN's 2022 count for the US was 14,295, which is consistent with a slowly rising number of deaths as the population ages.
The US also has some of the highest diagnosis rates in the world. That is partly a result of high obesity rates and partly a result of how often Americans are scanned. Many of these tumours are small and found early, which is why kidney cancer survival in the US is relatively high.
For more on how cancer fits among America's top killers, see the leading causes of death in the US.
The main risk factors
Unlike some cancers, kidney cancer has a handful of well-established, largely preventable risk factors. Cancer Research UK has estimated that around a quarter of UK kidney cancer cases are linked to excess weight and around a quarter to smoking.
| Risk factor | What the evidence shows |
|---|---|
| Overweight and obesity | Linked to about 24% of UK cases; risk rises steadily with body weight |
| Smoking | Linked to about 24% of UK cases in a Cancer Research UK analysis; risk falls after quitting |
| High blood pressure | Consistently linked to higher risk, separate from the medicines used to treat it |
| Age | Most cases are diagnosed after 60 |
| Sex | Men have roughly twice the risk of women |
| Long-term kidney failure and dialysis | Raises the risk of kidney cancer |
| Inherited conditions | Including von Hippel-Lindau disease and some rare family syndromes |
| Workplace chemicals | Trichloroethylene and some other solvents have been linked to higher risk |
Two of the biggest risk factors, obesity and high blood pressure, are also among the leading drivers of heart disease and stroke. We look at how they shape global death figures in how obesity contributes to 5 of the top 10 causes of death and how many people die from high blood pressure every day. The tobacco link is covered in how many people die from smoking every day.
Survival depends on catching it early
Kidney cancer has one of the widest gaps in survival between early and late diagnosis of any common cancer. When a tumour is found while still confined to the kidney, most people are cured, often by removing part or all of the kidney. Once it has spread to distant organs such as the lungs or bones, the outlook is much worse, although newer immunotherapy and targeted drugs have improved it.
| Stage at diagnosis (US SEER data, 2015 to 2021) | Five-year relative survival |
|---|---|
| Localised (still within the kidney) | 93.3% |
| Regional (spread to nearby tissue or lymph nodes) | 76.4% |
| Distant (spread to other organs) | 19.1% |
Relative survival compares people with cancer to people of the same age without it. It does not predict any individual's outcome.
That roughly fivefold gap between localised and distant disease is why kidney tumours found by accident on scans are, in a strange way, a lucky break.
Why kidney cancer is often silent
The kidneys sit deep in the body, protected by the lower ribs and surrounded by fat. A tumour can grow to a large size there without pressing on anything that causes pain. That is why many cases are only found when symptoms finally appear, by which time the cancer may already have spread.
| Symptom | What to know |
|---|---|
| Blood in the urine | The most common symptom; may be painless and come and go |
| Pain in the side or lower back | A persistent ache below the ribs that is not linked to an injury |
| A lump in the side or tummy | Sometimes felt before any other symptom |
| Tiredness and weight loss | General signs that something is wrong |
| High temperature or night sweats | Not linked to an infection |
| Anaemia | Sometimes picked up on a routine blood test |
Most of these symptoms have other, more common causes. But as with bladder cancer, any blood in the urine should be checked by a doctor, even if it only happens once.
The numbers are set to rise sharply
A 2025 review in the journal European Urology projected that by 2050 there could be around 745,800 new kidney cancer cases and around 304,900 deaths a year worldwide, almost double the 2022 death toll. Those projections assume today's rates stay the same, so the increase is driven mainly by population growth and ageing.
If obesity keeps rising, the real figures could be higher. If more countries cut smoking and control blood pressure better, they could be lower. Either way, kidney cancer is one of the cancers whose global toll is expected to grow fastest over the next few decades.
To see how risk factors like weight, smoking and blood pressure shape your own outlook, try our Death Clock. For the wider picture of cancer as a cause of death, see our cancer cause page.
The short version
- Kidney cancer killed about 156,000 people worldwide in 2022, roughly 427 a day, according to GLOBOCAN 2022.
- Around 434,800 people were diagnosed in the same year.
- In the UK it kills around 5,200 people a year, about 14 a day. In the US the ACS estimates about 15,160 deaths a year.
- Men account for nearly two thirds of deaths worldwide.
- About a quarter of UK cases are linked to excess weight and a quarter to smoking.
- Five-year survival is about 93% when found early but about 19% once it has spread to distant organs.
- Deaths could nearly double by 2050 as populations age.
While you were reading
This article takes about 12 minutes to read. In that time, roughly 3 or 4 people around the world died from kidney cancer, and around 2,000 people died from all causes. You can watch the total grow on our live death counter, or see today's running figures on the deaths today page.
Data sources: International Agency for Research on Cancer, GLOBOCAN 2022 (Global Cancer Observatory), as published by the World Cancer Research Fund; Cancer Research UK kidney cancer statistics (mortality 2017 to 2019, 2021 to 2023 and 2022 to 2024; risk factors); American Cancer Society, Key Statistics for Kidney Cancer; US National Cancer Institute SEER Cancer Stat Facts, Kidney and Renal Pelvis Cancer (2015 to 2021 survival); European Urology (2025) projections to 2050. Figures are rounded estimates and the latest years available at the time of writing. This article is for general information only and is not medical advice. If you notice blood in your urine or any of the symptoms above, speak to your GP or doctor.
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