Earth's limb seen from orbit, a cyclone spiralling over the ocean

Planetary Health Check

Earth's vital signs are flashing red.

7 out of 9 Planetary Boundaries are breached.
The systems that keep our world liveable are under strain.

DOWNLOAD 2026 REPORT

Safe Operating Spacefor Humanity

Zone ofIncreasing Risk

Zone ofHeightened Risk

We are here

Planetary
Boundary

High-Risk
Line

Every one of the planet's vital signs lands somewhere on this scale — from safe green to deep red. Open the to see every reading one by one, or the for the whole planet in a single glance.

The Blood Test

Like a patient's lab results: all 14 vital signs read against their safe limits for 2026, grouped under the nine Planetary Boundaries they belong to.

The Spider Diagram

The whole planet at a glance. Each wedge grows outward as its boundary is pushed harder — the further past the green safe ring it reaches, the deeper the trouble.

The Planetary Boundaries

Nine guardrails that keep Earth stable enough to remain a safe home for life — and for us.

Human activity has pushed Earth beyond its Safe Operating Space, and the planet's ability to absorb that pressure is wearing thin. Warming is speeding up, ecosystems are visibly fraying, and several key systems are showing the first warning signs of tipping points — thresholds that, once crossed, are very hard to walk back. We have entered the Anthropocene: a time when human activity has become a force shaping the whole Earth system.

To keep the planet stable, we have to bring it back inside its Planetary Boundaries — the nine scientifically defined guardrails that hold Earth in a healthy, liveable state. Stay within them, and the planet remains our dependable home; cross them, and we risk lasting damage to the very life-support systems we all depend on. Today, seven out of nine boundaries have been breached. The two still safe are no accident: the ozone layer, once thinning fast, is healing today because the world agreed to ban the chemicals destroying it — proof that these limits can be defended when we act together.

The Planetary Health Check is a yearly check-up on the state of the planet. It brings together the latest scientific assessment of each Planetary Boundary, explains the science behind them in plain language, and highlights the changes that matter most for Earth's health right now. Like any check-up, its purpose is not the diagnosis — it is what we do next.

Three other ways to read the planet

The same 2026 readings, told three different ways — design explorations in progress.

01 · Dashboard Bento Read-out A mission-control grid where every boundary becomes its own gauge, with detail drawers that open up the numbers behind each one. Open 02 · Immersive A Living Planet A scroll-driven journey around a living Earth that visibly responds as you move through it, boundary by boundary. Open 03 · Organic A Living Field Guide A living field of growth, with the nine boundaries as organisms that visibly swell as they push past their safe limits. Open

Figures

Interactive versions of the report's key charts.

Figure · Temperature Humanity's Journey Half a million years of global temperature — the deep ice ages, the stable Holocene in which civilization arose, the modern spike and the Great Acceleration — as one interactive timeline. Open Figure · 1750–2024 The Great Acceleration Twenty-four indicators of human activity and the Earth system, each a panel in one woven figure. Switch between cumulative charts and the warming-stripes art cut; the colour reads as cumulative progress. Open Figure · Temperature Holocene to 3000 Twenty-four thousand years of global temperature — from the Last Glacial Maximum through the stable Holocene to the Anthropocene spike, then three model futures to the year 3000. Zoom in on the present; hover for the reading. Open

Suggested citation

If you draw on the Planetary Health Check 2026 in your own work, please cite it as follows.

Short form

Planetary Boundaries Science (PBScience). 2026. Planetary Health Check 2026. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Potsdam, Germany.

Long form

Planetary Boundaries Science (PBScience). 2026. Planetary Health Check 2026, edited by Kitzmann, N.H., Caesar, L., Sakschewski, B. and Rockström, J. with contributions from Sakschewski, B.*, Caesar, L.*, Andersen, L. S., Bechthold, M., Bergfeld, Beusen, A., L., Billing, M., Bodirsky, B. L., Botsyun, S., Dennis, D. P., Donges, J. F., Dou, X., Eriksson, A., Fetzer, I., Gerten, D., Häyhä, T., Hebden, S., Heckmann, T., Heilemann, A., Huiskamp, W., Jahnke, A., Kaiser, Kitzmann, N.H., J., Krönke, J., Kühnel, D., Laureanti, N. C., Li, C., Liu, Z., Loriani, S., Ludescher, J., Mathesius, S., Norström, A., Otto, F., Paolucci, A., Pokhotelov, D., Rafiezadeh Shahi, K., Raju, E., Rostami, M., Schaphoff, S., Schmidt, C., Steinert, N. J., Stenzel, F., Virkki, V., Wendt-Potthoff, K., Wunderling, N., Rockström, J. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Potsdam, Germany. https://planetaryhealthcheck.org *equal contributors to this work and designated as co-first authors

The Planetary Health Check is published by Planetary Boundaries Science under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence. planetaryhealthcheck.org