How many ASNs are there in the RIPE region in 2026? The RIPE NCC delegation file of 24 September 2026 lists 39,908 registered Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs), 325 more than the 12 July 2026 file. 2,175 of them were registered between 1 January and 24 September 2026, already more than the 1,916 still held from the whole of 2025. Three in four of the 2026 numbers (75.8%) are held by End Users through a sponsoring LIR, and the United Kingdom leads new registrations.
This is our own analysis of the public RIPE NCC delegation file. The tables and caveats follow; the methodology section shows how to reproduce them.
ASN registrations by year
Registered ASNs in the 24 September 2026 file, grouped by the year of their current registration:
| Year | ASNs registered (still active) | of which 16-bit |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 1,733 | 388 |
| 2019 | 1,857 | 475 |
| 2020 | 1,584 | 338 |
| 2021 | 1,644 | 350 |
| 2022 | 1,518 | 334 |
| 2023 | 1,585 | 333 |
| 2024 | 1,641 | 17 |
| 2025 | 1,916 | 3 |
| 2026 (to 24 September) | 2,175 | 0 |
This is a snapshot of the current registry, so each year counts only the registrations still held today. Older cohorts have had more time to shrink through returns and deregistrations, which flatters recent years in any comparison. The effect is measurable: between the 12 July and 24 September 2026 files, the 2025 cohort fell from 1,952 to 1,916. Returns and deregistrations, including the RIPE NCC's clean-up of unannounced ASNs, keep trimming every cohort.
Read conservatively, 2026 is already the largest cohort in the file, ahead of 2025 (1,916), 2019 (1,857) and 2011 (1,822), with three months still to run. The file holds 2,734 registrations from the twelve months to 24 September 2026. Monthly registrations in 2026 stayed between 205 and 276: 205 in January, 247 in February, 242 in March, 276 in April, 240 in May, 255 in June, 223 in July, 270 in August and 217 in September to the 24th.
The 16-bit column changes the long-term reading. The RIPE NCC has assigned from one pool with no distinction between 16-bit and 32-bit numbers since 1 January 2010 (ripe-679), and it reissues returned numbers, so a reissued 16-bit number counts in the year of its current registration. 16-bit numbers made up 333 to 475 of each cohort from 2018 to 2023, then 17 in 2024, 3 in 2025 and none in 2026. Counting 32-bit numbers only, registrations rose from 1,252 in 2023 to 1,624 in 2024, 1,913 in 2025 and 2,175 in 2026 to 24 September. On the supply side, IANA delegated three further blocks of 1,024 numbers each (216476 to 219547) to the RIPE NCC on 1 June 2026 (IANA AS Numbers registry).
The €50 per-ASN fee came with the RIPE NCC Charging Scheme 2025 (ripe-828) and continues under the 2026 scheme (ripe-848). The two years under that fee, 2025 and 2026, are the two largest cohorts in the file. From 2027 the first ASN registered to an LIR account is included in the €1,894 annual fee and each additional ASN stays at €50 (ripe-867, adopted at the May 2026 General Meeting).
Which countries register the most ASNs?
New registrations, 2026 to 24 September versus full-year 2025:
| Rank | 2026 (to 24 September) | 2025 (full year) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | United Kingdom (292) | United Kingdom (216) |
| 2 | Germany (179) | Germany (166) |
| 3 | Russia (174) | Russia (153) |
| 4 | United States (155) | Turkey (114) |
| 5 | Turkey (125) | France (101) |
| 6 | Hong Kong (82) | United States (86) |
| 7 | France (74) | Netherlands (71) |
| 8 | Netherlands (74) | Iran (66) |
| 9 | Poland (66) | Poland (60) |
| 10 | China (56) | China (50) |
The United Kingdom has already passed its full 2025 total: 292 registrations to 24 September against 216 for the whole of 2025. The United States, Hong Kong and China rank high in the RIPE NCC registry and their counts are rising: United States 56 in 2024, 86 in 2025 and 155 in 2026 to 24 September; Hong Kong 17, 29 and 82; China 29, 50 and 56. The country code is the registrant's declared country, not where the network runs. We sponsor such holders only when the network itself operates in the RIPE NCC service region.
The all-time picture looks different. By total registered ASNs, Russia leads with 5,758, followed by Germany (3,234), the United Kingdom (3,099), Poland (2,469) and Ukraine (2,016). France holds 1,877.
How many new ASNs go through a sponsoring LIR?
An ASN held by an End User through a sponsoring LIR carries a sponsoring-org: attribute on its aut-num object in the RIPE Database. Joining the delegation file to the RIPE Database split dump of 24 September 2026 gives the share by year of registration:
| Registration year | ASNs | With sponsoring-org: | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 1,585 | 846 | 53.4% |
| 2024 | 1,641 | 924 | 56.3% |
| 2025 | 1,916 | 1,231 | 64.2% |
| 2026 (to 24 September) | 2,175 | 1,648 | 75.8% |
| All registered ASNs | 39,907 | 17,114 | 42.9% |
Three in four of the numbers registered in 2026 are sponsored, against just over half in 2023. The rest are held by LIR members for their own networks or by End Users under a direct contract with the RIPE NCC; we did not split those two.
IPv6 allocations and PI assignments
IPv6 records still active in the registry, by year of registration and by status:
| Year | LIR allocations | Direct assignments (PI, anycast, IXP) |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 992 | 244 |
| 2021 | 2,090 | 233 |
| 2022 | 965 | 216 |
| 2023 | 790 | 212 |
| 2024 | 699 | 249 |
| 2025 | 531 | 248 |
| 2026 (to 24 September) | 452 | 272 |
LIR allocations of IPv6 fell four years running, from 2,090 in 2021 to 531 in 2025, and stood at 452 for 2026 by 24 September. Direct IPv6 assignments to End Users (PI, anycast and IXP space) reached 272 over the same period, the highest yearly count in the file since 2018. 2021 was also a peak year for IPv4 records (2,900, against 1,167 in 2020 and 844 in 2022), consistent with a wave of new LIR accounts that each took an IPv6 allocation alongside a /24 from the IPv4 waiting list; the delegation file does not record why. The waiting list itself is still open: 791 LIRs were queued on 25 September 2026.
By August 2026, 15,806 of the 20,687 LIR accounts held IPv6 space (RIPE NCC member update, August 2026), which leaves fewer accounts still to take a first allocation.
More networks want their own AS number. Fewer take an IPv6 allocation of their own, and more take a direct assignment instead. New networks get addressed through their LIR or a sponsoring LIR rather than by becoming one.
What this means if you are getting an ASN
- Demand has not slowed under the €50 per-ASN fee: 2026 is the largest cohort in the file with three months to run. Costs and route options are covered in our ASN registration cost breakdown.
- 75.8% of the 2026 numbers are held through a sponsoring LIR, since direct RIPE NCC membership only pays off for organizations that need allocations of their own. Through our ASN registration service an ASN costs €130 per year as of September 2026 (€80 service fee plus the €50 RIPE NCC fee, passed through at cost), with no RIPE NCC membership. Published sponsor prices are compared in our ASN sponsorship price comparison, and holders who already have a number can move it with a sponsoring LIR change.
- One proposal could change the entry rule: 2026-01 would drop the multihoming justification for the first ASN of a holder of address space issued by the RIPE NCC. Its Discussion Phase ended on 5 August 2026 and it is at the drafting stage, not policy; the multihoming requirement of ripe-679 still applies.
- If you are starting from zero, the process itself is documented step by step in the complete ASN registration guide. To see how any of these numbers is routed today, use the ASN lookup.
Methodology
Source: the RIPE NCC extended delegation file (delegated-ripencc-extended-latest, published at ftp.ripe.net/pub/stats/ripencc/), snapshot of 24 September 2026, 260,748 records. We counted records of type asn, ipv4 and ipv6 with status allocated or assigned, grouped by the date and country code recorded in the file; for IPv6 the two statuses are shown separately. For the sponsored share we read the aut-num objects in the RIPE Database split dump (ripe.db.aut-num.gz, 24 September 2026, 39,907 objects), matched them to the file's ASN records by number and counted the objects carrying sponsoring-org:; one ASN in the file has no aut-num object in the dump.
Because the file is a snapshot of current delegations, resources that were assigned and later returned do not appear. Yearly figures therefore mean registrations from that year still active today, and comparisons between recent and older years should be read with that survivorship effect in mind. Country codes reflect the registrant's declared country, not necessarily where the network operates.
The source file is public; every figure in this report can be reproduced with a few lines of scripting. The next edition will use the full-year 2026 file.
Official References
- RIPE NCC delegation statistics: https://ftp.ripe.net/pub/stats/ripencc/
- RIPE NCC Charging Scheme 2026: https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-848/
- RIPE NCC Charging Scheme 2025: https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-828/
- RIPE NCC Charging Scheme 2027: https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-867/
- ASN assignment policy (ripe-679): https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-679/
- RIPE Database split dump, aut-num objects: https://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/split/ripe.db.aut-num.gz