In world demographics, the world population is the total number of humans currently alive. It was estimated by the United Nations to have exceeded 8 billion (8,000,000,000) on November 15, 2022. It took around 300,000 years of human prehistory and history for the human population to reach a billion and only 218 more years from there to reach 8 billion. As of 2026, the world population is approximately 8.3 billion.
The human population experienced continuous growth following the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the end of the Black Death in 1350, when it had reached nearly 370 million. The highest global population growth rates, with increases of over 1.8% per year, occurred between 1955 and 1975, peaking at 2.1% between 1965 and 1970.