For the first time, seven in ten Americans diagnosed with cancer are still alive five years later. That is the headline finding of the American Cancer Society's 2026 statistics report, which puts the five-year relative survival rate for all cancers combined at 70% for people diagnosed between 2015 and 2021.
Half a century ago the figure was closer to 50%. The gain of roughly 20 percentage points reflects decades of progress in prevention, screening, and treatment.
"Seven in 10 people now survive their cancer five years or more, up from only half in the mid-70s," said Rebecca Siegel, senior scientific director of surveillance research at the American Cancer Society, in the report's release.
What actually drove the gains
The single largest factor is tobacco. US adult smoking prevalence has fallen from 42% in 1965 to 11% in 2024, according to the ACS's Cancer Facts and Figures 2026. Because smoking causes more than 80% of lung and laryngeal cancers, that decline alone has reshaped the mortality curve.
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Earlier detection has done the rest of the heavy lifting, together with better therapies that keep advanced disease in check for longer. Cancer mortality has now fallen 34% since its 1991 peak, averting an estimated 4.8 million deaths.
The numbers behind the milestone
The gains are not evenly spread, but they are most striking in cancers that were once close to a death sentence. Five-year survival for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, has climbed from 32% in the mid-1990s to 62%. Liver cancer survival has more than tripled, from 7% to 22%. Lung cancer has moved from 15% to 28%.
For distant-stage disease, where cancer has spread far from the original site, survival for all cancers combined has doubled since the mid-1990s, from 17% to 35%.
Where the progress stops
Nearly 2.11 million Americans are expected to be diagnosed with cancer in 2026, and about 626,140 are expected to die from it. Roughly 44% of those cancers are considered potentially preventable through changes in behavior, weight, alcohol use, and sun exposure.
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Smoking alone is still projected to cause 182,830 cancer deaths in 2026, either through direct use or secondhand exposure, the ACS analysis shows. Progress has also been uneven across groups. "Lack of access to high-quality cancer care and socioeconomics continues to play a significant role in persistent racial disparities," said Ahmedin Jemal, the ACS's senior vice president for surveillance, prevention and health services research.
Cervical cancer illustrates both sides of the story. Wider HPV vaccination could close much of the gap in prevention that still leaves the disease more common in some states than others, according to the PubMed Central summary of the ACS analysis.
Anyone concerned about symptoms or family history should talk to their own doctor about which screenings are due at their age. The ACS's recommended screening schedules for breast, cervical, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancer are set out in its 2026 report.
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This article is made and published by Jesper Bengtson, who may have used AI in the preparation.