We are often asked how many UK parents go overseas for surrogacy, and where they are going. Hard data on the scale of international surrogacy is difficult to find but we can get an indication with information from the English family court. Parental order applications made by UK parents (the process by which they become the legal parents of a child born through surrogacy) are recorded by country of birth, giving us a helpful picture of where international surrogacy arrangements are taking place.
The data is not necessarily complete (some parents are not eligible to apply for parental orders – such as non-biological parents – and some may not apply through choice or lack of awareness) but it does give us a broad overview of where surrogacy is taking place, and how that is growing and changing over time.
What do the latest statistics on international surrogacy show?
We recently made a freedom of information request to CAFCASS (the Child and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) for their data to 2025. It shows that, since 2015, UK surrogacy arrangements accounted for 43% of all parental order applications made to the family court. That means that over the past ten years, more than half of UK parents through surrogacy have gone abroad to find a surrogate.
By a very long distance, the US has been the most popular international surrogacy destination, accounting for 25% of all parental order applications, and 44% of international surrogacy cases.
That is good news for ethical surrogacy, since in both the UK and the US (which make up 68% of all surrogacy cases), surrogacy is safe, legal and well-established.
What about surrogacy destinations other than the UK and the USA?
It is also interesting to see the scope of applications relating to births elsewhere over the past 10 years. There is clear evidence – as we see on the ground – of surrogacy having moved from place to place as the landscape has changed.
Births in Asia make up less than 5% of overall applications since 2015 (with the overwhelming majority of these relating to applications made before 2017 for children born in India and Thailand, which is not surprising given that commercial surrogacy was prohibited for foreign couples in both countries in 2015). Since 2017 very few parental order applications have been made following births in Asia. However, since 2024 there has been a modest upward trend in applications for children born in Central Asian countries such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, including 15 applications submitted in 2025 for children born in Kazakhstan. Significant caution is recommended in relation to programmes run from Europe (typically Northern Cyprus or Georgia) which engage ‘travelling surrogates’ from countries like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. This form of surrogacy, which typically operates within a hazy legal framework can involve significant ethical and legal risk.
Applications in respect of surrogacy in Ukraine rose from 2017 onwards, making Ukraine historically the third most popular single surrogacy destination after the UK and the US, accounting for 7% of all parental order applications since 2015. Unsurprisingly the latest figures show a dramatic fall in applications since 2023, the obvious result of Ukraine having been a warzone since February 2022.
In the last few years, parental order applications for children born in Africa have started increasing, but in reality they remain small, making up only 4% of parental order applications overall. Nigeria is the most popular destination in Africa by far, recording 59 applications made in 2025.
South American countries like Mexico and Colombia are current surrogacy destinations, but the numbers show how new these destinations are. No parental order applications were recorded for South America before 2021, and the numbers remain small. There were only 30 Mexican surrogacy cases and 62 Colombian surrogacy cases in total since 2015, though there has been a sharp upward trend with 39 applications following births in Mexico and Colombia in 2025. We routinely advise parents to be cautious and it is clear that these remain emerging destinations.
In Europe, where most countries prohibit surrogacy (or have no framework supporting it), the numbers of surrogacy births are also tiny, with just 6 cases in 2025 in Cyprus (where surrogacy is unregulated), and <6 in Greece (where there is a somewhat restrictive legal framework).
What do intended parents considering international surrogacy need to know?
What all this shows is that parents considering their surrogacy options need to take enormous care and to sift reality from what they are told about how safe, ethical and well-established surrogacy is in the country they are considering going to.
It also shows clearly that the overwhelming majority of UK parents conceiving through surrogacy either do so in the UK or in the USA. Opponents of surrogacy often focus on examples of unregulated surrogacy taking place in poor countries, and while we should of course do everything we can to eliminate any unethical surrogacy practice, the CAFCASS statistics show very clearly that this context is the exception rather than the norm.
We are incredibly proud at NGA Law to be leading UK specialists in surrogacy law. The fact that we have – for 17 years – been immersed in what is happening on the ground gives us a unique perspective to be able to advise parents and keep them safe. We have advised parents engaging in surrogacy in every one of the destinations mentioned in this blog (and many more). We are also proud to have represented parents in a quarter of all the US (and 15% of all the international) parental orders made in total since 2015.
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