Azerbaijan’s Finance Ministry has announced plans to increase the country’s defence and security budgets by ₼318 million ($187 million), to reach a total of ₼8.7 billion ($5.1 billion) in 2026.
According to a pro-government media outlet, APA, the budget has been reflected in the ministry’s report, which was published on Tuesday.
‘Next year’s defence and security budget was increased by ₼318 million ($187 million) from the current year. Thus, the specific weight of defence and national security expenditures in the budget will be 21%’, APA wrote.
According to pro-government media outlet Report, the total state budget revenues for 2026 are expected to be ₼38.4 billion ($23 billion), with expenditures estimated at ₼42 billion ($24 billion).
In 2024, former Finance Minister Samir Sharifov said in parliament that Azerbaijan was increasing its military spending by President Ilham Aliyev’s decree.
‘20.3% of next year’s [in 2025] budget expenditures are planned to be spent on defence and security because in the case of the Armenian militarisation’, Sharifov said at the time.
That year, the defence and the security budget were increased by ₼1.738 billion ($1 billion).
The increase in military spending in Azerbaijan over the past years took place amidst heightened tensions with Armenia which continued following the end of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War of 2020 with several Azerbaijani attacks on Armenia and Baku’s takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijani officials, including Aliyev, have regularly accused Armenia of ‘revanchism’ and of harbouring territorial claims against Azerbaijan.
However, Armenia and Azerbaijan appear to have made significant strides in the peace process since Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan initialed the peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan alongside US President Donald Trump in Washington D.C on 8 August.
In late August, Pashinyan said that his country’s defence may not see an increase in 2026, saying it was ‘logical’ seeing as Armenia and Azerbaijan had ‘established peace’.
Azerbaijan’s decision to increase its military spending for 2026 notably comes at a low point in Azerbaijan’s ties to Russia, fueled by the deadly crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) flight in December 2024, which Baku has blamed on Russian air defence, as well as the deaths of two ethnic Azerbaijanis during a Russian police raid in Yekaterinburg in June 2025.
In the following months, there have been repeated threats from Russian propagandists and some politicians that the Kremlin could launch an attack on Azerbaijan.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
