The UK spent £13.04bn on Official Development Assistance in 2025, down £1.05bn on the previous year – a drop of 7.4%, according to provisional figures released by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
Spend for the 2025 calendar year represented 0.43% of gross national income in contrast with 0.5% in 2024, the FCDO said.
Last year the government controversially announced it will pare back the nation’s ODA spending to just 0.3% of GNI by 2027, with the aim of boosting funding for defence. A parliamentary briefing paper published in February suggested that just £9.4bn will be available for ODA next year as a result of the step-down.
Last month, the FCDO set out its plans for managing the change. Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper acknowledged that “in a range of countries” the UK will “transition away” from spending high levels of grant ODA. She added that FCDO bilateral country allocations to G20 nations would be phased out, with the exception of Turkey, with a shift to “investment and mutually-beneficial partnerships”.
According to FCDO’s provisional ODA figures for 2025, of the preliminary total of £13.04bn, around £2.4bn – or 18% – was spent supporting refugees in the UK, down from £2.8bn the previous year.
The UK spent £10.25bn on bilateral ODA, which is usually paid out for a specific purpose to an organisation, country or region. Some £2.8bn was spent on multilateral ODA, meaning that it was given to a large organisation without specific projects or locations in mind.
Africa was the largest recipient of bilateral ODA, netting £1.68bn in 2025. Asia was in second place, on £1.03bn. Europe received £279m, the Americas £150m and the Pacific £20m.
Last month’s FCDO announcement said that, in the future, the proportion of FCDO country and regional ODA allocated to Africa would reduce. Supporting figures provided by the department suggested that planned country and regional ODA for Africa would drop from £818m in 2026-27 to £677m in 2028-29. ODA for the Middle East and North Africa is due to be £375m in 2026-27, dropping to £362m in 2028-29.
The FCDO accounts for the lion’s share of ODA spending – £9.5bn in 2025. Second place went to the Home Office on £2.06bn, then the Department of Health and Social care on £411m, the cross-government UK Integrated Security Fund on £261m and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero on £201m.
Gideon Rabinowitz, policy and advocacy director at Bond, the UK network for non-governmental organisations working in international development, said the 2025 figures laid bare “the severe damage already caused by Labour's cuts to the UK aid budget”.
“Lifesaving humanitarian programmes, including education provision in Syria and healthcare programmes across Africa, have already been forced to close, and, with even deeper cuts still to be implemented this year and next, the worst consequences are yet to be realised,” he said. “What is clear is that marginalised communities, particularly across Africa, will continue to pay the highest price for these political choices.”
He added: “These cuts are costing lives and leaving us all more vulnerable to a world with more disease, conflict and crises. Instead of leading the retreat from our international commitments, now is the time for the UK to step up and urgently rebuild its shattered reputation on the global stage.”
A final release clarifying the government’s ODA spend for 2025 is due in the autumn.