Europe Rearms: Germany, Poland and Spain Lead a Spending Surge
Germany's military spending rose 24% in 2025 and Spain's 50%. How Europe's biggest militaries are changing, by the numbers.
For most of the three decades after the Cold War, Europe’s militaries shrank. Budgets were cut, conscription was abandoned in most countries, and tank fleets were sold off or scrapped. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 ended that era, and 2025 was the year the change showed up clearly in the numbers.
The biggest increases in a generation
According to SIPRI, real-terms military spending rose in 2025 by:
- Spain: 50%, to $40.2 billion
- Germany: 24%, to $114 billion
- Poland: 23%, to $46.8 billion
- Italy: 20%, to $48.1 billion
France grew more slowly, up 1.5% to $68.0 billion, and the United Kingdom’s spending fell 2.0% to $89.0 billion. Even so, the UK remains Europe’s second-largest spender after Germany, excluding Russia.
| # | Country | Military spending |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇺🇸 United States | $954B |
| 2 | 🇨🇳 China | $336B |
| 3 | 🇷🇺 Russia | $190B |
| 4 | 🇩🇪 Germany | $114B |
| 5 | 🇮🇳 India | $92.1B |
| 6 | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | $89.0B |
| 7 | 🇺🇦 Ukraine | $84.1B |
| 8 | 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia | $83.2B |
| 9 | 🇫🇷 France | $68.0B |
| 10 | 🇯🇵 Japan | $62.2B |
| 11 | 🇮🇱 Israel | $48.3B |
| 12 | 🇮🇹 Italy | $48.1B |
| 13 | 🇰🇷 South Korea | $47.8B |
| 14 | 🇵🇱 Poland | $46.8B |
| 15 | 🇪🇸 Spain | $40.2B |
Germany becomes Europe’s biggest spender
Germany’s jump to $114 billion makes it the fourth-largest military spender in the world, ahead of India, the UK and France. In 2025 the German parliament exempted much of defence spending from its strict constitutional borrowing limits, which removed the main barrier to sustained increases.
Money is arriving faster than capability, though. Germany’s military still has only around 296 tanks and 184,000 active personnel by Global Firepower’s count. Rebuilding stocks of ammunition, air defence and armour takes years, and much of the new spending is going into orders that will be delivered later this decade.
Poland builds Europe’s heaviest army
Poland is spending 4.5% of GDP on defence, a higher share than any of Europe’s large economies. Since 2022 it has ordered hundreds of tanks and self-propelled guns, along with rocket launchers, attack helicopters and fighter jets, from the United States and South Korea. It already fields about 798 tanks, more than any other EU country in our dataset and more than Germany and the UK combined, and around 593 self-propelled artillery pieces.
Poland’s aim is to build one of the largest land forces in Europe, and its geography explains why: it borders both Russia (through the Kaliningrad exclave) and Belarus, and sits on the main land route into Central Europe. Compare its forces directly with Russia or Germany.
The 5% target
At their June 2025 summit in The Hague, NATO members agreed to raise spending on defence and security-related needs to 5% of GDP by 2035. At least 3.5% is meant for core defence, with up to 1.5% for things like protecting infrastructure, cyber defence and the defence industry. The previous benchmark was 2%.
By SIPRI’s measure, most large European militaries are still between about 2% and 2.5% of GDP. Getting to 3.5% for core defence alone would mean another large step up for Germany, France, Italy and Spain, and the debate over how to pay for it is now one of the central questions in European politics.
Size is still a gap
Even after the increases, Europe’s armies remain small by historical standards. The five largest EU militaries in our dataset (Germany, France, Italy, Poland and Spain) together spent about $317 billion in 2025, well above Russia’s estimated $190 billion. But spending is split across separate national forces with different equipment, supply chains and command structures. The question for the next decade is whether higher budgets can be turned into larger, more integrated forces. See how the numbers stack up in NATO vs Russia by the numbers.