How old are the world's leaders, and how long have they been in power?
Each bar starts at the leader's age when they took office and ends at their age today, so its length is their time in office. Based on the person who holds main executive power: the prime minister, president, or monarch.
* Mahmoud Abbas is president of the State of Palestine, but the Palestinian Authority’s governing authority is largely limited to parts of the West Bank.
Notes, sources and caveats
Who counts as the leader
The person who holds the main executive power: the prime minister in parliamentary systems and in semi-presidential ones where the government is led by the prime minister (such as Portugal, Poland, Moldova, Romania and Lebanon), the president in presidential systems and in semi-presidential ones where the president dominates (such as France), and the monarch in Gulf and other executive monarchies. Some calls are judgement calls. For Saudi Arabia we count Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, prime minister since 2022 and the de facto ruler, rather than King Salman (born 1935), who remains head of state. Pew Research Center's 2026 analysis counts the king. Using him would barely change the global figures but would change the G20 counts: three G20 leaders over 80 rather than two, and two under 50 rather than three. In Timor-Leste we count the prime minister (Pew counts the president), and in Nicaragua Daniel Ortega, co-president with Rosario Murillo. Xi and Tô Lâm are counted from taking the top party post. Many ceremonial presidents and kings are not shown.
Terms
Years as prime minister count towards time in office: Putin's 2008–2012 premiership, between two presidencies, and Erdoğan's 2003–2014 premiership before he became president, so each is drawn as one continuous bar. Erdoğan is one bar from 2003 (prime minister, then president from 2014), and Togo's Faure Gnassingbé likewise runs from 2005. Where a leader went straight from one office to another, the bar is continuous.
Accuracy
Every birth date was checked against two independent sources (English Wikipedia and Wikidata), and every term start and end date against Wikipedia. That check corrected a number of dates from my first draft. Where the two sources disagreed I looked further.
Two leaders have an official birth date that differs from other published ones, and I used the official one: Lee Jae-myung (22 December 1964, although other sources say about 8 December 1963) and Tarique Rahman (1968 on his national ID card; other sources say 1965 or 1967). For Mauritania's Ghazouani, Wikipedia and Wikidata differ by 27 days (4 or 31 December 1956) and I used the 4th. For acting or interim leaders (Tokayev, Japarov, Mirziyoyev, Delcy Rodríguez) the clock starts the day they took power.
Sweden's Kristersson and Romania's Bolojan lead caretaker governments, and Brazil's Lula stays until January 2027.