Doomsday Clock Explained: Every Setting Since 1947 to 85 Seconds

The Doomsday Clock is set at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has been since the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created it in 1947. The Bulletin moved the minute hand on Jan. 27, 2026, four seconds closer than the 89 seconds it chose a year earlier. Midnight stands for global catastrophe. The clock is a judgment by a panel of experts, not a measurement, and the furthest it has ever been is 17 minutes, in 1991.

This page explains what the clock measures, who decides, and why every one of its 28 settings was chosen. It also looks at what has happened since the January announcement, including the expiry of New START, and at the strongest criticism of the clock.

What Is the Doomsday Clock Set At Now?

Eighty-five seconds, as of the Bulletin's 2026 statement. The board said Russia, China, the United States and other major countries have become "increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic," and that hard-won global understandings are collapsing. It named the coming expiry of New START, record climate trends, artificial intelligence and biological security among the drivers, and called for limits on nuclear arsenals, international guidelines for AI and multilateral agreements on biological threats. Bulletin President Alexandra Bell moved the hand at the announcement in Washington.

The statement also says something that is easy to miss: leaders have not just failed to act on last year's warning, they have mostly moved the other way. In 2025 the board said the world was perilously close to disaster. Its 2026 verdict is that the warning was ignored. Reuters noted that the new setting is four seconds closer than the one chosen a year earlier.

What Does the Doomsday Clock Measure, and Who Sets It?

The clock is a symbol of how vulnerable humanity is to catastrophe caused by its own technology. Artist Martyl Langsdorf designed it for the Bulletin's 1947 cover, and the magazine's founders, a group that included Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer, first used it to warn about atomic weapons. For its first 26 years editor Eugene Rabinowitch decided every move of the hand. Since his death in 1973, the Bulletin's Science and Security Board has set it every year in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes eight Nobel laureates.

The scope has widened. Climate change was added in 2007, along with emerging technologies in the life sciences. Disinformation entered the discussion later in the 2010s, and artificial intelligence and biological threats appear in the most recent statements. The board counts down in seconds only since 2020, when it set 100 seconds to signal that the situation had become more dangerous than at any point in the Cold War. The clock gives no probability and no date.

Doomsday Clock Timeline: Every Setting Since 1947

The Bulletin has reset the minute hand 27 times since the original 7 minutes. The table lists every change with the reasons from the Bulletin's own timeline. Years not shown, such as 2016, 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2024, kept the previous setting.

Closest and Furthest From Midnight

The record low point for danger was 1991. The Soviet Union was collapsing, START had been signed, and the United States and Russia began pulling bombers and missiles off hair-trigger alert. The board moved the hand to 17 minutes, which was off the original dial, and described the illusion that tens of thousands of weapons guarantee security as stripped away. The clock has never been that far from midnight again.

The closest approach for 65 years was two minutes in 1953, after both superpowers tested hydrogen bombs. The hand returned to two minutes in 2018 and went below it in 2020, the first time the clock was counted in seconds. The current 85 seconds is 35 seconds closer than the worst Cold War reading.

What Has Happened Since the 2026 Announcement?

New START expired on Feb. 5, 2026, after the board's statement. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called it a "grave moment" and said the world faced, for the first time in more than 50 years, no binding limits on the strategic arsenals of the two largest nuclear powers, according to UN News. Russia has said it will observe the treaty's limits for now as long as the United States does, which Reuters reported on Feb. 11. The informal restraint is unverified, and Washington rejected Moscow's offer to extend the old limits for a year. We covered the moment in A World Without Nuclear Arms Control Begins This Week.

Other news points the same way. A day after the treaty ended, a senior U.S. arms control official accused China of conducting a covert nuclear explosive test in 2020, as we reported. That followed the order from President Trump in late 2025 to resume U.S. nuclear tests, which would end a moratorium in place since 1992. In March, Macron announced that France would increase its warhead count and stop publishing totals. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated nine nuclear-armed states held about 12,187 warheads in January 2026, as laid out in our guide to who has nuclear weapons. The Bulletin usually announces the next setting in January.

Criticism of the Doomsday Clock

The loudest critic is Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, who has called the clock a "propaganda stunt." In a Bulletin interview he made three objections: a clock implies a fixed time before disaster when nuclear war has no such schedule; it does not track measurable indicators of risk; and adding climate change turned it into a "dread-generating device." He also worries that constant alarm paralyzes people instead of moving them to act.

A second line of criticism comes from risk analysts. A Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory review of nuclear-war risk estimates, including the clock, called them "fundamentally intuitive or based on very simple—even simplistic—analyses." The Bulletin answers that each setting comes out of a painstaking annual process, and that the clock has often moved away from midnight when leaders made progress, as in 1963, 1988 and 1991. For a plain account of how an accidental war could actually start, see our explainer.

Doomsday Clock FAQ

What is the Doomsday Clock set at in 2026? 85 seconds to midnight, set on Jan. 27, 2026. It is the closest the clock has been since 1947.

Who sets the Doomsday Clock? The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board, in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes eight Nobel laureates.

When was the Doomsday Clock created? In 1947, when artist Martyl Langsdorf designed a clock for the cover of the Bulletin. It started at 7 minutes to midnight.

What was the furthest the Doomsday Clock has been from midnight? 17 minutes, in 1991, after the end of the Cold War and the signing of START.

Does midnight mean the end of the world? Midnight is a metaphor for global catastrophe. It is not a prediction, and it is not tied to a date.

This explainer reflects the Bulletin's announcement of Jan. 27, 2026, and will be updated when the next setting is announced.