Today we are announcing that Publish What You Fund will not be running the Aid Transparency Index in 2026, and all future editions are in doubt unless further funding can be secured. The Index has provided an independent assessment and ranking of the transparency of the world’s largest aid agencies since 2012. It has had a significant impact on the quality and quantity of aid data that is published to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) Standard. Publish What You Fund is warning that without the Aid Transparency Index, there is great risk of an unchecked decline in aid transparency.

The Index has had an outsized influence on global aid transparency – prompting some agencies to share detailed information on their aid spending for the first time, and driving many others to prioritise improvements to their data. The Aid Transparency Index uses ongoing engagement with donor agencies and a rigorous, two-stage scoring and feedback process to drive improvements.

The Index has successfully created political and reputational incentives. Peer reviewed research has demonstrated its power in shaping transparency norms, and senior officials—from government ministers to development bank presidents—pay close attention to the results. It has also been cited in major government policies, including the UK’s international development white paper.

Gary Forster, CEO of Publish What You Fund, said:

“We are really proud of the impact the Aid Transparency Index has had on the global aid dataset – the 2024 scores were the highest ever recorded and we uncovered growing numbers of researchers, journalists, governments and CSOs who now rely on the information that’s available. And so we are incredibly disappointed that we have not been able to secure funding to run the 2026 edition of the Index. Like many public goods, it has been difficult to find the $300,000 to secure the future of this global accountability mechanism.”

“The facts show that data deteriorates between editions of the Index, and the quality only improves once the assessment process starts again. No other mechanism provides such scrutiny. Without it, we risk an unchecked decline in aid transparency.”

This comes at a time when the role of aid transparency in countering misinformation has never been clearer—and never been more needed. the Trump administration recently made false claims about $50 million of aid spent on condoms for Gaza. It is a claim that can be investigated and rebuffed using aid data.

The same data is being used in settings around the world – 17 aid agency websites run on IATI data, and 14 recipient governments use it systematically for decision-making. Citizens in Nigeria are using it to hold funders to account, and the world Bank is using it to track funding gaps in food crises.

Gary Forster added:

“Publish What You Fund will continue to push forward on critical issues, from the transparency of development finance institutions to localisation, UK government departments, climate funds and philanthropies. And we hope that at some point we can assess and report on individual agencies or groups of donors. But for now, our work to support the global aid transparency dataset is on hold.”