Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

• 1. Introduction

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  The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has spent nearly six decades doing something governments rarely do for themselves: publishing inconvenient truths about weapons. Founded in 1966 at the suggestion of Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander, SIPRI grew from a single commemoration of peace into one of the world's most-cited authorities on war. Erlander's idea was tied to a milestone: Sweden had gone 150 years without fighting a war, and he wanted an institution that could study how other conflicts might be avoided. That origin story raises several questions. How does a small institute in Stockholm earn the trust of diplomats, journalists, and generals worldwide? What kind of data does it collect, and why does it matter who collected it? And what happens when the numbers it publishes land in the middle of a geopolitical storm?

• 2. A Commission, A Name, A Mission

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  Ambassador Alva Myrdal chaired the Swedish Royal Commission that gave SIPRI its shape. The 1966 report she helped produce called for research concentrated on armaments, their limitation and reduction, and arms control. The commission was specific about method too: the work should be "applied research character directed towards practical-political questions" carried on alongside more theoretical inquiry. That dual mandate set up a productive tension. SIPRI would not be purely academic, nor purely a policy shop. It would be both at once, feeding hard data to the people who actually negotiated treaties. Myrdal herself became the first Chair of the Governing Board, a role she held until 1967. Her husband Gunnar took over and served until 1973. Later, Hans Blix, who would become one of the United Nations' best-known weapons inspectors, served as Chair. The Swedish Riksdag formalized the institute on the 1st of July 1966, giving it the legal status of an independent foundation. That status was not incidental. Independence meant the numbers could not be quietly adjusted to suit any government's preferences.

• 3. The Yearbook and Open Sources

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  On the 12th of November 1969, SIPRI published the first edition of what would become its most influential product. The SIPRI Yearbook was designed as a single authoritative source to which politicians, diplomats, and journalists could turn for an account of what had happened that year in armaments, armed conflicts, and disarmament. The premise was deceptively straightforward: gather information that is technically public, organize it rigorously, and put it in the hands of people who need it. SIPRI built its databases from open sources, not classified material. That choice made the institute's findings harder to dismiss. No government could accuse it of leaking secrets; the data was, in principle, already out there. The Yearbook is now translated into Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian. Its summary appears in Catalan, Dutch, French, Italian, Korean, Persian, Spanish, and Swedish. That range of languages tells its own story about who reads it and who considers it worth rendering in their own tongue.

• 4. Measuring Military Capability

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  SIPRI tracks arms transfers going back to 1950, but the raw number of weapons exported tells an incomplete story. To make comparisons meaningful, SIPRI developed a metric it calls the trend-indicator value, or TIV. Rather than using the price a government paid for a weapons system, TIV measures delivery volume in terms of military capability. A cheap tank from an older generation and an expensive modern fighter jet are not equivalent military acquisitions; TIV tries to reflect that difference. Alongside the Arms Transfers Database, SIPRI maintains separate databases on arms-producing companies, chemical and biological warfare, national and international export controls, arms control agreements, military manoeuvres, and nuclear explosions. The Multilateral Peace Operations Database covers personnel, fatalities, and budgets for operations from 2000 onward. The Military Expenditure Database reports annual military spending for most countries in the world. Together, these databases represent a systematic attempt to make the global arms economy legible to anyone willing to look.

• 5. The People Who Run It

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  The Director of SIPRI is appointed by the Swedish Government, which ensures accountability without giving any single government control over the research. The position has changed hands many times. Robert Neild held it from 1967 to 1971, followed by Frank Barnaby, who led the institute through most of the Cold War years from 1971 to 1981. Adam Daniel Rotfeld of Poland served the longest stretch among later directors, from 1991 to 2002. Tilman Brück, a German economist, was appointed in September 2012 and served from January 2013 to June 2014 before leaving after just over a year. Dan Smith of the United Kingdom took the post in 2015 and held it until 2025. The current Director, Karim Haggag, was appointed in September 2025. The research staff numbers around 46 researchers and research assistants, working within a total staff of 84 employees representing 27 different nationalities. Researchers are recruited for specific project periods rather than permanent posts, which keeps the institute responsive to shifts in where conflict and arms control questions are most urgent.

• 6. Europe, Arms, and a Shifting Map

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  In March 2026, SIPRI published findings that would have seemed improbable twenty years earlier. Europe had become the world's largest arms-importing region, driven by military expansion following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During the 2021-2025 period, arms imports by European states increased significantly. Poland stood out as one of the continent's largest importers, accelerating a military modernisation programme that had been building for years. The report also flagged a supplier that has gained far less attention than the traditional arms-exporting powers: South Korea. Large-scale defence contracts with European countries, Poland chief among them, elevated South Korea's profile as a global arms exporter. SIPRI's standing as the source for these figures was not accidental. It reflected decades of investment in data collection and a reputation for exactly the kind of impartiality that governments turn to when they want numbers they can cite without immediately being accused of bias. The University of Pennsylvania's Lauder Institute ranked SIPRI among the top three non-US think tanks worldwide in 2014; by 2020, it ranked 34th among think tanks globally.

• 7. A Forum, A Conference, A Lecture

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  Beyond its publications, SIPRI convenes. The Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development, the Stockholm Security Conference, and the SIPRI Lecture are the three largest recurring events. In 2025, the Stockholm Forum ran in a hybrid format, gathering participants around the theme of "The Future of Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding." The 2024 Stockholm Security Conference drew over 100 global participants to discuss deterrence and European security. A 2022 SIPRI event on the theme of "Environment of Peace" was delivered by Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand and former Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme. The institute also receives regular visits from government delegations, parliamentarians, and academic researchers, and maintains close connections with the diplomatic community in Stockholm. Funding comes primarily from governments and independent philanthropic organisations worldwide, supplemented by an annual core grant from the Swedish government approved by the Swedish parliament. The next round of defence spending data, expected to show whether European military budgets continued their upward trajectory, will be among the most-watched figures the institute produces.