Medal of Honor Statistics in US 2026 | Key Facts

Medal of Honor in the US 2026

The Medal of Honor stands as the single most prestigious military decoration the United States government can bestow upon any member of its armed forces. Since its creation by an act of Congress in 1861, this decoration has been awarded to those who demonstrated extraordinary acts of valor, selflessness, and intrepidity far beyond the standard call of duty — at the direct risk of their own lives — in combat against an enemy of the United States. As of 2026, the Medal of Honor continues to be the rarest and most revered symbol of military courage in American history, touching nearly every major conflict the nation has engaged in, from the Civil War battlefields of the 1860s to the mountains of Afghanistan in the 21st century.

What makes the Medal of Honor statistics in the US in 2026 particularly compelling is not just the sheer weight of the numbers but the deeply human stories those numbers represent. With just 3,528 individual recipients recorded in over 160 years of history — out of more than 41 million Americans who have served in the armed forces — the medal’s rarity underscores both the extraordinary standard it demands and the reverence with which it is treated. Sweeping legislative changes signed into law in December 2025 have further elevated how the nation financially honors its living recipients, marking a pivotal moment in the ongoing commitment to those who wore this nation’s highest distinction.

Interesting Facts About the Medal of Honor in the US 2026

Source: U.S. Army Center of Military History (army.mil/medalofhonor/statistics.html); Congressional Medal of Honor Society (cmohs.org); U.S. Congress (congress.gov); White House (whitehouse.gov); Military Times (militarytimes.com, December 4, 2025)

The table above lays out some of the most remarkable data points surrounding the Medal of Honor in the US as we move through 2026. Perhaps the most striking figure is the ratio — fewer than 3,600 total medals issued to a pool of more than 41 million Americans who have served in uniform across history. That means statistically, fewer than 0.01% of everyone who ever donned a U.S. military uniform has earned this decoration. The double-award rule being eliminated in 1917 and the restoration of Mary Edwards Walker’s medal in 1977 are also important historical turning points that shaped the modern character of the award.

The December 2025 passage of the MEDAL Act (Monetary Enhancement for Distinguished Active Legends Act) — signed by President Trump on December 1, 2025 — marks the first congressional pension increase for Medal of Honor recipients since 2002. Raising monthly payments from $1,489.73 to $5,625, or roughly $67,500 per year, reflects a long-overdue recognition that the 61 living recipients carry enormous public responsibilities well into retirement. The bipartisan bill passed the House unanimously in February 2025 and was cleared by the Senate by unanimous consent before going to the president’s desk.

Medal of Honor Recipients by Military Branch in the US 2026

Source: U.S. Army Center of Military History — army.mil/medalofhonor/statistics.html

The U.S. Army overwhelmingly leads all branches of the military in Medal of Honor recipients, accounting for 2,404 of the total — representing more than 69% of all medals awarded across the DoD services. This dominance is largely a product of history: the Army was the most expansively deployed branch through the Civil War, Indian Campaigns, and both World Wars, where the bulk of the decoration’s history was written. The U.S. Navy follows with 746 recipients, reflecting its own long record of valor at sea, while the Marine Corps accounts for 297. The Air Force, which only became an independent service branch in 1947, holds 17 decorations, and the Coast Guard has earned the Medal of Honor once in its institutional history.

What is equally notable in this breakdown is the 618 posthumous awards listed by the Army Center of Military History — a figure that speaks to the brutal reality of what qualifies for this decoration. Most acts that earn the Medal of Honor in the US occur under life-threatening conditions, and a substantial portion of honorees never lived to receive the medal in person. The posthumous figures continue to grow with each new review cycle, as the military periodically revisits historically overlooked cases — most recently exemplified by the 9 recipients added in January 2025 alone, some dating back to the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection of 1899.

Medal of Honor Recipients by Conflict in the US 2026

Source: U.S. Army Center of Military History — army.mil/medalofhonor/statistics.html

The Civil War remains, by an enormous margin, the single largest source of Medal of Honor recipients in American history — 1,522 decorations, which accounts for roughly 40% of all medals ever awarded. This volume reflects both the unprecedented scale of the conflict and the relatively broad criteria used during that era for issuing the award. Over time, the bar has been raised significantly, which is why modern conflicts yield far fewer recipients. World War II, the next largest category, produced 464 recipients across four years of U.S. involvement. Vietnam, despite lasting over two decades of active engagement, produced 246 recipients — fewer than half of WWII’s total, a clear sign of stricter selection standards in the postwar era.

The contrast between Vietnam (246 recipients) and more recent conflicts is jarring. The War in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom) produced only 6 recipients, and Operation Iraqi Freedom produced 4. These numbers are not a reflection of any lesser courage — they represent the increasingly rigorous scrutiny applied to Medal of Honor nominations in the modern military. Nominations now must pass through multiple layers of review, and in many recent cases, previous Silver Stars and Distinguished Service Crosses have been upgraded years later upon fresh review, as seen with several of the January 2025 additions.

Most Recent Medal of Honor Awards in the US 2026

Source: U.S. Army Medal of Honor — army.mil/medalofhonor; Congressional Medal of Honor Society — cmohs.org/news-events/news/two-new-medal-of-honor-recipients-william-simon-harris-and-james-w-mcintyre

January 2025 was the most consequential month in recent Medal of Honor history. On January 3, 2025, President Biden awarded 7 medals in a single White House ceremony — 5 for Korean War service and 2 for Vietnam War service. Then on January 16, 2025, the Army presented two additional medals to the descendants of Privates Harris and McIntyre, soldiers whose medals had been approved by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 but were never formally presented due to a clerical error, leaving that recognition unclaimed for nearly 120 years. Together, the 9 awards in January 2025 brought the total count of individual recipients to 3,528 as of January 29, 2025. The most recent living recipient added to the rolls is Spc. 4th Class Kenneth J. David, who received his medal in person at the January 3, 2025 ceremony.

Among the notable honorees is Gen. Richard E. Cavazos, who made history as the first Hispanic American to reach the rank of four-star general in the U.S. Army and previously held the Distinguished Service Cross. His posthumous Medal of Honor recognizes heroism during the Korean War. The awards for Civil War veterans Shadrach and Wilson in July 2024 illustrate that the review process for historical upgrades is ongoing — the military continues to audit past records to ensure that acts of extraordinary valor from any era are not left unrecognized.

Living Medal of Honor Recipients in the US 2026

Source: Congressional Medal of Honor Society — cmohs.org; Military Times (December 4, 2025) — militarytimes.com; Stars and Stripes (December 3, 2025) — stripes.com; Simple English Wikipedia, citing CMOHS, 2025

The 61 living Medal of Honor recipients as of 2026 carry a weight that extends well beyond their military service. Many spend their post-service years traveling the country for school visits, military recruitment events, hospital tours, and public ceremonies — duties that, until the passage of the MEDAL Act in December 2025, were largely unfunded and required personal financial sacrifice. The Vietnam War generation dominates the living recipient count at 45 individuals, reflecting both the size of that conflict’s cohort and the passage of time — recipients from World War II and the Korean War have largely passed on. The Afghanistan War contributes 14 living recipients, while Iraq accounts for just 2 living honorees out of the 4 total awarded for that conflict.

The MEDAL Act, signed into law on December 1, 2025, delivered the first pension increase for living Medal of Honor recipients since 2002 — a 23-year gap. Congress first established the pension in 1916 at $10 per month. It was raised to $100 in 1961, then to $1,000 in 2002, with only cost-of-living adjustments applied after that. The new law quadruples the base rate, bringing monthly payments to $5,625 (~$67,500 per year). Surviving spouses of deceased recipients also receive a new pension rate of $1,406.73 per month under the same legislation. Both rates are indexed to inflation going forward.

Medal of Honor Recipients by Racial and Ethnic Group in the US 2026

Source: Congressional Medal of Honor Society — cmohs.org/recipients; WETA Medal of Honor Fact Sheet — weta.org; American Legion, Inside the Medal of Honor (March 2024) — legion.org

The demographics of the Medal of Honor reflect both the diversity of those who have served in the U.S. military and, in some cases, the historical inequities in how valor was recognized during certain eras. African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans have all earned the decoration, though in many cases these recognitions came decades late — after extensive review processes revealed that race or ethnicity had influenced original award decisions. Gen. Richard Cavazos, posthumously decorated in 2025, was the first Hispanic four-star general in U.S. Army history, and his belated Medal of Honor points to the ongoing effort to correct historical gaps. The Nisei (Japanese American) soldiers of WWII, many decorated through the landmark 2000 review, are well represented in the Asian American count.

With more than 764 foreign-born recipients on record, the Medal of Honor has never been exclusive to U.S.-born citizens — citizenship has never been a requirement to earn the award, only service in the U.S. Armed Forces. Canadian-born individuals account for 61 of these foreign-born recipients, most from the Civil War era. The lone female recipient, Mary Edwards Walker, was initially stripped of her medal in 1917 as part of a mass revocation affecting 911 recipients whose awards were deemed procedurally improper — her medal was ultimately restored in 1977 through the Army’s Board for Correction of Military Records, and she remains the only woman ever recognized with this honor.

Medal of Honor Recipients by State in the US 2026

Source: World Population Review — worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/medal-of-honor-recipients-by-state (February 2026)

New York leads all 50 states by a wide margin with approximately 672 Medal of Honor recipients — a figure that reflects both the state’s enormous population historically and its dominant role in supplying Union Army troops during the Civil War, when roughly 40% of all medals were issued. Pennsylvania follows with 379, and Massachusetts — a major Union state — holds 265. Ohio and Illinois round out the top five with 254 and 206, respectively. The pattern is consistent: states that were heavily populated and actively engaged in the Civil War on the Union side earned the most decorations simply by fielding the most troops during the era when the Medal was most generously distributed.

After the Civil War, state affiliation no longer carries the same predictive weight for recipient counts. In modern conflicts, Medal of Honor recipients come from every state, and the distribution tracks more closely with general population size than with geography or regional military tradition. Southern states and western territories that were either part of the Confederacy or not yet fully developed during the 1860s have naturally lower historical totals, though their representation in 20th and 21st century awards is proportionate to their populations. The ongoing review of overlooked cases means these state-level counts continue to shift slightly as corrections are made.

Key Milestones and Legislative Facts About the Medal of Honor in the US 2026

Source: Congress.gov (S.214 MEDAL Act of 2025 — 119th Congress); White House Briefings (whitehouse.gov, December 1, 2025); Congressman Chris Pappas press release (pappas.house.gov); Stars and Stripes (stripes.com, December 3, 2025); Congressional Medal of Honor Society (cmohs.org)

The legislative history of the Medal of Honor is as important as its battlefield history. When Congress established the Medal of Honor Roll in 1916 and created a formal monthly pension of just $10, it was a symbolic first step toward financial recognition — meaningful at the time but quickly outdated. The gap between 2002 and 2025 — a span of 23 years without a congressional pension increase — became increasingly indefensible as living recipients described covering their own travel expenses for recruiting visits and public engagements. The MEDAL Act of 2025, introduced in the Senate by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and in the House by Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX), passed both chambers by unanimous votes — a rare display of bipartisan unity — before being signed by President Trump on December 1, 2025.

The opening of the National Medal of Honor Museum in March 2025 in Arlington, Texas is equally significant. After the National Medal of Honor Monument Act was signed in 2021 to authorize a monument in Washington, D.C., the museum opening marked the first permanent, large-scale interactive institution dedicated to preserving the stories of all 3,528 individual recipients. The museum serves as a living archive and educational resource, housing exhibits on valor, sacrifice, and the values — courage, commitment, integrity, sacrifice, citizenship, and patriotism — that the Medal of Honor is understood to embody. As of 2026, both the museum and the pending D.C. monument represent the nation’s most visible commitment to keeping these stories alive for future generations.

Disclaimer: This research report is compiled from publicly available sources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the completeness or reliability of the information. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.

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