The short answer. More than most people think. In 2025 INTERPOL published 19,568 new Red Notices, a record — and its own task force refused or cancelled 2,550 Red Notices and diffusions, also a record, 558 of them on human-rights or political grounds. Of the deletion requests the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL's Files decided in 2024, its latest reported year, 60% ended with a finding that the data broke INTERPOL's rules, and in 164 more cases the data was deleted before the Commission ruled.
Records on both sides of the door: more notices entering than ever, more thrown out than ever.
The inflow
INTERPOL published 19,568 Red Notices in 2025, up 26% on 2024’s 15,548, itself up 27% on 2023 — two leaps after a decade near 12,000. On 31 December 2025, 86,021 Red Notices were valid, of 141,082 valid notices of every colour. Red is the only kind whose purpose is arrest.
The front door
Before publication, every request passes INTERPOL’s compliance review. The task force refused or cancelled 2,462 Red Notices and diffusions in 2024 and 2,550 in 2025 — and the grounds shifted: 558 were stopped under Articles 2 or 3 of the Constitution in 2025, against 305 the year before. Read one way, the filter works harder every year. Read the other, thousands of requests a year are so flawed that INTERPOL’s own lawyers reject them.
The applicant’s door
The Commission’s latest report covers 2024: 2,586 admissible requests, “the highest number ever recorded” — 45% seeking deletion, 37% access, 18% revision — and 2,717 closed. Of the 539 deletion requests decided on the merits, the data was compliant in 217 and non-compliant in 322 — 272 on the substance, 50 because the requesting country failed to cooperate: a 60% non-compliance rate, up from 26% in 2022 and 32% in 2023. In 164 requests the data was deleted “prior to a CCF decision” — sometimes the challenge alone is enough. The 2025 figures follow in November 2026.
Most challenged data does not survive scrutiny. The odds favour the applicant who files a disciplined, documented request — and they favour nobody who does not file.
What the numbers do not say
They do not say that deletion is quick: 30% of deletion decisions in 2024 overran the nine-month target, and the Commission’s Chair told INTERPOL’s 2025 General Assembly that delays “will be even worse” before new staff make a difference. They do not say how many notices go unchallenged because their subjects never learn they exist. And they say nothing about guilt: a deletion means INTERPOL was not allowed to hold the data, no more and no less.
Every figure here is maintained, dated and sourced on the CCF Tracker.
Related
- What is INTERPOL’s CCF, and what can it do?
- How long does Red Notice deletion take?
- Which INTERPOL rules get a Red Notice deleted?
- INTERPOL — notice statistics, December 2025: notices published 2015–2025 and valid notices at 31 December 2025 — interpol.int
- INTERPOL — notice statistics, December 2025: refusals and cancellations by ground, 2017–2025 (Compliance and review, — interpol.int
- CCF Annual Activity Report 2024, pages 11–18 — interpol.int
- Speech by the CCF Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson to the 93rd INTERPOL General Assembly, November 2025 — interpol.int
- The CCF Tracker — every figure, maintained and sourced — rednoticehelp.com
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