Cancer in Norway 2025
Report
|Published
A total of 40,364 new cancer cases were reported in Norway in 2025, according to figures from the report Cancer in Norway 2025.
Key message
In 2025, a total of 40,364 new cases of cancer were reported. This is a small increase from the figures reported in CiN 2024, and it is the first year Norway has surpassed 40,000 new cases annually. Since age is an important risk factor for cancer, we expect an increase in the number of new cases due to a higher proportion of older individuals.
Several major types of cancer, such as prostate cancer, lung cancer, and colorectal cancer among men, have seen a reduction in rates over the past decade.
For women, there has been a reduction in the rates of lung cancer and gynecological cancers, with a particularly large reduction in the rates of cervical cancer.
Non-melanoma and melanoma skin cancers are two types that continue to show a strong increase, and there is also a significant increase in breast cancer. When we look at the rates for all cancers combined, there has been a small reduction in rates among men and an increase among women over the past decade.
The most common types of cancer in men are prostate cancer, non-melanoma skin cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, and skin melanoma, while cancer of the breast, lung, and colon, as well as non-melanoma and melanoma skin cancers, are the most common types of cancer in women.
By the end of 2025, 359,257 individuals were alive after having had at least one cancer diagnosis at some point in their lives.
In 2025, 11,524 people died of cancer in Norway. Lung cancer, colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, and breast cancer caused more than half of these deaths.
Five-year relative survival varies from under 10 percent for pancreatic cancer (excluding neuroendocrine tumors) to nearly 100 percent for testicular cancer, and there is also significant variation between different stages. Fortunately, there has been a significant improvement in five-year relative survival over the last 10–15 years for cancers with poor prognosis, such as lung cancer, stomach cancer, and esophageal cancer.
For all types of cancer combined, the 5-year relative survival is 78 percent, which means that nearly 8 out of 10 cancer patients survive their cancer for 5 years or more.
Cancer in Norway is the Cancer Registry's annual report with complete data on incidence and survival for the various types of cancer, broken down by, among other things, gender, age, and counties.