International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), published through GBIF
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, version 2026-1 (GBIF checklist)
Every taxon assessed for the IUCN Red List with its higher taxonomy, rank and global Red List category (Extinct, Extinct in the Wild, Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable, Near Threatened, Least Concern, Data Deficient), as a Darwin Core Archive. Version 2026-1 holds 175,909 species, of which 49,505 are threatened (Critically Endangered, Endangered or Vulnerable). Assessed species are a biased sample: birds, mammals, amphibians, reef corals and conifers are comprehensively assessed, insects barely, so shares apply to assessed species only. The archive has no threat or habitat fields.
Numbers published from it
Licence and credit
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- What the terms say
“This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 License”
From the producer's terms, checked 2026-10-04; re-checked automatically every week.
- Credit we give
- IUCN (2026). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2026-1. https://www.iucnredlist.org. Downloaded on 2026-07-28. https://doi.org/10.15468/0qnb58 accessed via GBIF.org on {date_accessed}. CC BY 4.0.
- Copy of the raw file
- Allowed: we keep a public copy of every version we use.
- Cite as
- IUCN (2026). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2026-1. https://www.iucnredlist.org. Downloaded on 2026-07-28. https://doi.org/10.15468/0qnb58 accessed via GBIF.org on {date_accessed}.
Files
Darwin Core Archive of the IUCN Red List version 2026-1 (tab-separated, no header; columns defined in meta.xml): taxon.txt, distribution.txt with the global Red List category, vernacularname.txt, eml.xml.
https://hosted-datasets.gbif.org/datasets/iucn/iucn-2026-1.zip
Status
- Programme
- Version 2026-1 was released by IUCN on 9 July 2026 and published on GBIF on 28 July 2026. IUCN is on the list of organisations the US is withdrawing from (Presidential memorandum of 7 January 2026, FR Doc 2026-00976); no effect on Red List releases so far. Not a US federal programme.
- Updates
- The Red List is updated at least twice a year; GBIF publishes a new versioned archive a few weeks after each release
- Next release
- 2026-11-19: IUCN Red List version 2026-2 (IUCN's planned date, subject to change); the GBIF archive iucn-2026-2.zip follows some weeks later and needs a new pinned artifact URL.
- Last check
- Unchanged since the last fetch (2026-10-05T11:04:01Z)