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Decades of cancer research have provided health care professionals with the tools to treat cancer more effectively, so that cancer in general is becoming less of a death sentence and more of a treatable chronic disease,?according to the 75^th annual by ºÚÁÏ´óʪPosts Cancer Society (ACS) researchers. In the mid-1970s, the 5-year cancer survival rate was 50% and now it¡¯s 70%, meaning that 7 in 10 people diagnosed with cancer can celebrate their 5-year diagnosis anniversary.

Improvements in survival reflect:

• Advances in treatment. For example, survival has improved for some types of leukemia because of the development of tyrosine kinase inhibitors which allow most patients to have a near-normal life expectancy. Specific drugs include Gleevac (imatinib) and Sprycel (dasatinib)

• Earlier diagnosis.?Screening for breast and prostate cancer have contributed to improvements in survival.

Despite these gains in survival, however, in 2026, there will be an estimated 2.1 million new cancer cases or about 5,800 diagnoses each day.

For women, incidence is highest for breast cancer, which is diagnosed more than twice as often as second-ranking lung cancer. Incidence of liver cancer, melanoma, and cancer in the uterine corpus is also rising for women.

For men, the highest incidence is for prostate cancer, which is diagnosed twice as often as second-ranking lung cancer. And, the incidence of prostate cancer continues to increase.

Incidences of oral cavity cancer and pancreatic cancer are rising in both men and women.

Cancer is still the most common cause of death for men in the US ages 60 to 79 and women ages 40 to 79. For all ages combined, cancer is the second most common cause of death (after heart disease).?

For 2026, it¡¯s estimated that 626,140 people in the US will die from cancer or about 1,720 deaths a day. Lung cancer will once again cause the most cancer deaths in 2026, more than second-ranking colorectal cancer and third-ranking pancreatic cancer combined.

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These data are from??published in the ACS flagship journal?CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians,?in its consumer-friendly companion report,?Cancer Facts & Figures 2026?,?and on the interactive website, the?.?These publications are the most widely cited source of cancer statistics in the world. Authors of the study include ACS researchers:?Rebecca Siegel, MPH,?Tyler B. Kratzer, MPH,??Nikita Sandeep Wagle, PhD, MBBS, MHA, Hyuna Sung, PhD, and?Ahmedin Jemal, DVM, PhD.?

The biggest gains in survival were for some late-stage cancers and some of the deadliest types of cancer.

In general, the more advanced a cancer is, the more complicated it can be to treat. So, it¡¯s especially uplifting news that survival for those diagnosed with cancer not only increased for people with an early-stage diagnosis but also increased for people with metastasized tumors. Survival has improved for people with regional-stage disease (when tumors have spread from where they started to nearby organs) and distant-stage disease (where tumors have spread to organs further away from the starting point).

In fact, for all distant-stage cancers combined, the relative survival rate doubled from 17% in the mid-1990s to 35% for those diagnosed from 2015-2021.

Survival improvements were also seen for some types of cancer that have historically low 5-year overall survival rates, including:

• Liver cancer, with a 7% relative survival rate in the 1990s rising to 22% in 2023
• Lung cancer 15% to 28%
• Myeloma 32% to 62%

Survival improvements for advanced cancers during the corresponding period also includes lung cancer, the cancer type that causes the most deaths. For every 4 people diagnosed with lung cancer, 3 are detected when the cancer has already spread outside the lung. The 5-year relative survival rate for regional-stage disease increased from 20% to 37%. For distant-stage lung cancer, survival rates increased from 2% to 10%.

The cancer death rate has declined by 34% since its peak in 1991, averting about 4.8 million cancer deaths as of 2023.

Cancer death rates are a better indicator of progress against cancer than incidence or survival because they are less affected by detection methods. Between 1991 and 2023, the overall cancer death rate dropped by 34%, resulting in an estimated 4.8 million fewer cancer deaths than if mortality had remained at its peak.

The averted deaths are twice as large for men compared to women because the death rate in men peaked higher (as shown by the steeper red curve for men in the graph below) and declined faster (as shown by the larger gap between the red and blue curves in the graph below.)

There have been improvements in death rates for common causes of cancer death in both men and women.

For Men

• The lung cancer death rate dropped 62% from the peak in 1990 to 2023.

• The death rate for prostate cancer decreased 53% between its peak in 1993 and 2023, largely because of earlier detection through PSA and advances in treatment.

• The colorectal cancer death rate dropped by 55% between its peak in 1980 and 2023.

For Women

• The lung cancer death rate dropped 38% from the peak in 2002.

• The breast cancer death rate decreased 44% between its peak in 1989 and 2023, which averted an estimated 546,000 deaths. The decline was due to advances in treatment and earlier diagnosis through screening.

• Death rates for pancreatic cancer increased gradually from the mid-1990s to 2023, but the rate has been stable for the past 5 years.

Racial disparities persist for both incidence rates and mortality due to long-standing inequities in socioeconomic factors, including income, education, health literacy, and access to care.

Here are some key findings:

Lowest cancer incidence rate. Asian ºÚÁÏ´óʪPosts, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) men have the lowest cancer incidence rate. In fact, AANHPI is the only group where incidence in men is lower than in women. Notably, however, cancer mortality in Pacific Islander people is twice that for Asian ºÚÁÏ´óʪPosts women and 50% higher than Asian ºÚÁÏ´óʪPosts men.

Highest cancer incidence and mortality rates. Both cancer incidence and mortality are highest overall among ºÚÁÏ´óʪPosts Indian and Alaskan Native (AIAN) people.

• From 2018 to 2022, AIAN people had the highest incidence rates for colorectal cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer, stomach cancer, and cervical cancer.

• From 2019 to 2023, AIAN people had the highest death rates for the same cancer types.

Highest cancer incidence and mortality specific to sex. Black men have the highest cancer incidence rate overall¡ªa rate 78% higher than AANHPI men with the lowest incidence. Black men have the highest cancer death rate overall, largely due to prostate cancer because mortality among Black men is about 2 to 4 times higher than any other group.

About These Reports

The most recent year with available incidence and mortality data lags 2 to 4 years behind the current year because of the time it takes to collect data, compile it, verify its quality, and share the analysis. For both the?CA?report and?Cancer Facts & Figures 2026,?ACS researchers compiled the most recent data on population-based cancer occurrence and outcomes using incidence data collected by central cancer registries (through 2022) and mortality data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics (through 2023).

The most recent statistics don¡¯t include basal or squamous cell skin cancers because US cancer registries aren¡¯t required to collect information on these types of cancers.