How much are governments spending on quantum technology?
Governments have confirmed $40.9 billion of quantum funding at the allocated stage or beyond, with a further $160.6 billion announced but not yet allocated, for a grand total of $201.5 billion, as of Q3 2026. Forty nations and the EU have confirmed national budgets. Another 23 countries are tracked but not yet verified as funded.
The headline, and how it is counted
Governments have confirmed $40.9 billion of quantum funding, with a further $160.6 billion announced but not yet allocated, as of Q3 2026. Forty nations and the European Union carry confirmed national budgets. Another 23 countries are tracked but have no verifiable budget yet.
Confirmed means a program has reached the allocated stage of the budget ladder or beyond, so a legislature or agency has assigned money to a named program with a defined period. Announcements alone do not count. The figure is deliberately a floor.
Where the money stands: spent, active, announced
Of the $40.9 billion confirmed, $13.6 billion has been spent and $27.3 billion is active and committed. A further $160.6 billion is announced but not yet allocated.
Two thirds of confirmed funding is active rather than spent. Programs from 2018 to 2022 are moving into the spent column while the 2021 to 2025 wave is still being deployed.
Funding by region
| Region | Confirmed | Announced | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Europe | $16.16B | $8.71B | $24.86B |
| Asia-Pacific | $15.92B | $146.71B | $162.62B |
| Americas | $8.49B | $4.26B | $12.75B |
| Middle East and Africa | $0.32B | $0.92B | $1.25B |
Europe now leads narrowly on confirmed money, having overtaken Asia-Pacific as European national programs moved from commitment to allocation. Read the announced column with care: China alone accounts for about $138 billion of it, so a single country's reported intentions dominate the global announced total.
Momentum since 2018
The shape of the data is a maturing field rather than a spike. Early national initiatives, most of them launched between 2018 and 2022, are now disbursing. The larger wave committed between 2021 and 2025 is mid-deployment. New entrants continue to appear at the announcement stage, which is why the tracked country count keeps rising faster than the funded count.
How to use these figures
For benchmarking, compare confirmed against confirmed. For a budget case, the announced column shows what peers have signaled and the confirmed column shows what they have delivered. Every line in the Global Government Quantum Funding Dataset carries its agency, period, budget stage, confidence tier, and a source URL, so any figure you quote can be traced back to the document it came from.
Frequently asked
Most confirmed funding is active rather than spent. Programs from 2018 to 2022 are moving into the spent column while the 2021 to 2025 surge is largely committed and being deployed.
Governments fund the whole stack. Computing leads, but sensing, networking, security, and enabling technologies all appear in national programs.
It includes disclosed defense programs. Classified spending is not visible and is not estimated.
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