Integrity is a strategic asset for OECD Member and partner countries. When well designed and effectively implemented, public integrity systems protect democracies from corruption, strengthen trust in public institutions, and support the conditions for growth, fair competition and investment. Through assessing performance in seven key areas of 37 OECD Member and 25 partner countries’ integrity systems, the 2026 Anti-Corruption and Integrity Outlook shows how, in the face of evolving corruption risks, countries can better harness the integrity advantage to enable prosperous economies and resilient, trusted public institutions.
Corruption remains a significant and evolving threat. It hurts economic growth by making markets less stable and predictable, stifling innovation and investment, and adding cost and inefficiency. On the expenditures side, recent estimates show countries are losing a significant share of GDP to fraud, corruption and waste, with trillions in revenue lost by public, private and not-for-profit organisations each year. At the same time, corruption also distorts public policies, deepens inequalities and erodes public trust. The number of people with low or no trust in the national government now exceeds those who express trust. Fewer than one in three people find it likely that the government would refuse a corporation’s demand if it went against the public interest. These trends are further complicated and entrenched as corruption becomes more complicated, with organised crime networks and increasingly sophisticated fraud schemes, often enabled by new technologies, further amplifying corruption risks.
In the face of these challenges, countries are taking steps to strengthen their integrity systems. The number of countries that have adopted their first-ever anti-corruption strategy or lobbying law has risen. However, across all areas presented in this report, the average implementation gap – where countries do not translate regulations into practice – now stands at 19 percentage points. This remains the key challenge for integrity systems. While in several areas regulations have gradually improved, implementation lags behind, particularly in conflict-of-interest management, political financing and disciplinary systems. In addition, countries are often not monitoring the implementation of their integrity systems, with only one in four OECD Member countries and one in two partner countries tracking the implementation of actions in their anti-corruption strategies.
Chapters 2-8 of this Outlook show that high-performing countries are moving away from approaches to integrity that are overly rules-based, compliance-focused and process-heavy. Instead, they are adopting digital, risk-based and results-oriented approaches to tackle the most harmful risks in the most cost-effective ways. The strongest integrity systems extend the focus of anti-corruption measures to address corruption risks in the private sector and other high-risk areas including healthcare or defence. To support these efforts, it is essential to make better use of digital tools and improve data quality, interoperability and governance, particularly in oversight, enforcement and accountability functions. And, where corruption offences do occur, high levels of judicial integrity, based on strong selection and promotion procedures, codes of conduct as well as mechanisms for reporting wrongdoing, are important to ensure accountability.
This edition’s focus chapters, Chapters 9-11, explore how corruption risks related to fraud, public procurement and organised crime are evolving. Fraud has become the fastest growing of all crime types in several countries, and globally organisations are estimated to lose 5% of funds to fraud each year. The complexity of procurement processes and transactions, the sums involved, the close interactions between the public and private sectors, and the global and fragmented nature of procurement supply chains increase the risk of corruption. Estimates suggest that between 8-25% of global public investment may be lost to mismanagement and corruption each year. Many of these problems are underpinned and exacerbated by the growing threat of organised crime, the costs of which are now estimated to amount to as much as 5% of annual global GDP. Countries should therefore step up integrity efforts in these areas, by building strategic, evidence-based, preventative approaches which use resources more effectively and protect public funds and institutions better than relying on enforcement alone.
