Last year was the 20th year in a row when global freedom declined, according to the Freedom House. Only 21 percent of the world population lives in free societies. Out of 195 countries that Freedom House analysed, only 84 are considered free, against 111 that are labelled partly free or not free.

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This map shows leaders of 204 countries and territories, how long each leader has stayed in power, and their title. The map also shows partially recognised states, such as South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Kosovo, Transnistria and others.

Leaders Data Table

You can sort the table by the number of years in power, continent or alphabetically.

In some cases, it's tricky to define who should be named as the leader. For example, in Turkmenistan, officially, the president is Serdar Berdymuhamedov. His father, Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov, who ruled the country from 2007 to 2022, voluntarily resigned, deciding not to participate in the 2022 elections, supporting his son. However, due to the country's extreme isolation, it's difficult to confirm whether the de facto power lies with Serdar Berdymuhamedov rather than his father, who took the office of Chairman of the People's Council of Turkmenistan.

A similar situation has happened in Cambodia, where Hun Sen, who has served as the country's Prime Minister for 38 years, stepped down, allowing his son, Hun Manet, to take the position, while Hun Sen himself took the office of the President of the Senate and the Secretary of the Cambodian People's Party. In both cases, the official and internationally recognised leader is named as one.

Out of 204 countries, only 15 had leaders in power for longer than 25 years. The average length of stay worldwide is 7.27 as of May 2026. The longest-ruling leaders are in Africa: 10.5 years. However, the median length of power is more optimistic. Globally, it's only 3.96, and in Africa 6.14.

South America is the region with the shortest length of leaders in office. After the recent transfers of power, it's been just two years on average. Only in Guyana has a leader stayed in power longer than five years.

Although Delcy Rodríguez, acting president of Venezuela, got power only in January 2026, she has served as Prime Minister for almost eight years under Maduro's government. A similar situation is in Iran, where Ali Khamenei was eliminated on the 28th of February, but the regime stayed, and now Ali's son, Mojtaba Khamenei, is the Ayatollah. This naturally dumps the number.

The longest ruling leader is Hassanal Bolkiah, the sultan of Brunei. In the second and third places are the leaders of Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon. Notorious European dictators, Belarusian President Alexandr Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin, are only in 10th and 15th places, respectively.

Many leaders who have spent less than eight years in power have already shown authoritarian tendencies, for example, Qassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan. Others, like Miguel Díaz-Canel in Cuba, succeeded a regime that had already existed for decades. The leader of Cambodia stayed in power for less time than French President Emmanuel Macron, but the regime in his country have stood since 1984.

One person made this map. If you notice any mistakes or bugs in the map or table, or if a country leader has changed and it hasn't been reflected here yet, or if you would like to access the data in a spreadsheet, please fill out this contact form to let me know. I'll fix it as soon as possible.