As of the end of 2025, there were over 59 thousand orphans and children deprived of parental care in Ukraine. This is 4% less than the previous year, and this trend of decline has been observed for several consecutive years.
This is reported by Finway
“Almost a third of the children in this category are orphans, meaning they have lost both parents. The rest are so-called social orphans, who have living parents or legal guardians, but due to difficult life circumstances, are in state institutions or under guardianship.”
Features of the Adoption System in Ukraine
Despite the significant number of children, not all of them can be adopted due to the lack of appropriate status or incomplete judicial and social procedures. An additional complication is that many children are raised in large family groups, and the law prohibits separating siblings. Most candidates for adoption are willing to take in only one or two children, while the system often has groups of related children.
Decrease in the Number of Candidates and Adoption Dynamics
As of 2025, there are just over two thousand potential adopters registered in Ukraine. Mostly, these are married couples, but there are also hundreds of single individuals who are willing to raise children on their own. After several years of growth, the number of candidates decreased in 2025. The most active individuals seeking to become parents are aged between 40 and 50, with the highest number of interested parties residing in Kyiv, Kyiv, Lviv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
In 2025, new families received over 1.1 thousand children, which is less compared to the previous year when the highest adoption rate since the beginning of the full-scale war was recorded. Experts explain this by the complexity and duration of the procedures, as well as the fact that most candidates prefer small and healthy children, while the system is dominated by teenagers or children with special medical or psychological needs.
In addition to adoption, thousands of children find families under guardianship or care each year. In 2025, over 6.6 thousand children were placed in this way. For the third consecutive year, the most adoptions took place in the Dnipropetrovsk region, which also has the largest number of children remaining without parental care.