The current Doomsday Clock setting is 85 seconds to midnight, set on January 27, 2026. 89 seconds was the 2025 setting. Read what 85 seconds to midnight means.
In January 2025, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the clock at 89 seconds to midnight. At the time, that was the closest it had ever been, one second closer than the 2023 setting of 90 seconds. This page explains that 2025 reading. It is not the current time.
The Board moved the clock from 90 seconds to 89 seconds in January 2025. The reasons they gave were escalating nuclear risk, weaker arms-control agreements, the Russia-Ukraine war, 2024 as the hottest year on record at that time, and faster progress in artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons. The one-second move was small on purpose: conditions had worsened, and the Board was not yet describing a collapse.
The clock's time is not a literal countdown. It is a symbol, maintained since 1947, for how close humanity is to self-destruction in the judgment of the Bulletin's Science and Security Board. Midnight stands for global catastrophe. The closer the setting, the greater the danger they see. The clock has also moved backward eight times, including to 17 minutes in 1991 after the Cold War ended, so a close setting is a warning rather than a fixed outcome.
At 89 seconds, the Board was saying that nuclear risk, climate change, disruptive technology, and geopolitical conflict had stacked into a level of danger the clock had not shown before. In January 2026 they moved it four seconds closer, to 85 seconds, the largest forward move since the clock began to be set in seconds.
Doomsday Clock 2026: 85 seconds to midnight | What the Doomsday Clock is | Current time
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