2026-10-14 · Buddhists worldwide
Buddhists are a regional majority in only a few countries
Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia — most of the world is outside the tradition.
Buddhism counts about 500 million adherents worldwide, yet only a handful of countries — Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia among them — have Buddhist majorities. Pew Research Center's religious composition estimates put 88% of the world's Buddhists in East and Southeast Asia, leaving the faith a small minority across most of the globe. The tradition's demographic story is overwhelmingly an Asian one.
1 cell = 500 thousand Buddhists worldwide (0.1% of global Buddhists) · 1,000 cells
Context
Pew's 2026 religious composition estimates show how lopsided the distribution is. East and Southeast Asia hold 88% of the world's roughly 500 million Buddhists, with 6.2% in the rest of Asia and the Pacific, 3.4% in Africa and 2.4% in the Americas.
That concentration is what makes the headline notable: outside a handful of countries — Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia among them — Buddhists are a minority, and most of the world's population sits outside the tradition entirely. Pew's Religious Composition by Country dataset supplies the country-level detail.
Pew has also documented Buddhism's recent decline in East Asia, the region home to nearly nine-in-ten Buddhists worldwide — one reason the tradition's global trajectory hinges on demographic shifts in a small number of Asian societies.
Pew religious composition estimates.
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