STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) across Europe have soared to their highest levels in more than a decade, driven by shifting sexual habits and huge gaps in regional testing infrastructure.
Okay News reports that the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) released its latest Annual Epidemiological Reports on Thursday, May 21, 2026, revealing an alarming multi-year surge in bacterial infections. According to the data, recorded cases of gonorrhea skyrocketed by 303 percent between 2015 and 2024, culminating in 106,331 officially documented cases. Concurrently, syphilis cases more than doubled over the same timeframe to reach 45,577 infections, while chlamydia remained the continent’s most widespread STI with 213,443 recorded cases.
Public health chiefs expressed profound concern over a “distressing” spike in congenital syphilis, where the infection is passed directly from pregnant mothers to their newborns. Cases of congenital syphilis nearly doubled in just a single year, rising from 78 cases in 2023 to 140 in 2024 across the 14 nations tracking the metric. Bruno Ciancio, head of the ECDC’s directly transmitted and vaccine-preventable diseases unit, warned that if left untreated, these bacterial infections can cause severe, lifelong complications including chronic pain, infertility, and cardiovascular or nervous system damage.
The ECDC emphasized that while men who have sex with men remain the most disproportionately affected demographic, transmission rates are rising steadily among heterosexual populations. A key obstacle to curbing the spread is a lack of accessible healthcare, with the agency highlighting that 13 out of 29 reporting European countries still charge out-of-pocket costs for basic STI screening. Health experts are urgently calling on national governments to eliminate financial barriers, overhaul their testing frameworks, and accelerate partner notification protocols to halt onward transmission vectors before the crisis deepens.
