Australians registered 118,804 marriages in 2025 and 49,158 divorces, according to figures the Australian Bureau of Statistics released in Canberra on Tuesday. Marriages fell 1.7 per cent on the year. Divorces rose 4.1 per cent.

The crude marriage rate dropped to 5.3 per 1,000 people aged 16 and over, from 5.5 in 2024. The divorce rate went the other way, to 2.2 per 1,000 from 2.1. Both figures come from the ABS release Marriages and Divorces, Australia, 2025.

The decline in marriages was not spread evenly. The ABS reported that most age-specific marriage rates fell during the year, with the sharpest falls among people aged 25 to 34. Divorce rates rose across every male age group from 40 and every female age group from 35.

Median age at marriage was 32.7 years for men and 31.2 for women. At divorce it was 47.3 and 44.4. Couples who divorced in 2025 had separated a median 9.4 years after marrying and finalised the divorce a median 13.4 years after marrying, a gap of roughly four years spent inside the legal process.

Same-sex marriages numbered 4,636, or 3.9 per cent of the total, down 2.3 per cent from 4,746 in 2024.

Read across twenty years, the two lines have moved in the same direction. In 2005 the marriage rate was 6.9 per 1,000 and the divorce rate 3.3. Both are now materially lower. Fewer Australians are marrying, and of those who do, fewer are divorcing than a generation ago. What changed in 2025 is that the divorce line turned back up while the marriage line kept falling.

The most popular day to marry in 2025 was Saturday 25 October, written 25/10/25, with 2,035 weddings. The next busiest date, 22 November, drew 1,527. Neither came close to 10 November 2012, which the ABS records as the most popular wedding date of the past two decades with 3,081 marriages.

The ABS collects marriage data from state and territory registries of births, deaths and marriages, and divorce data from the federal courts. The figures cover applications granted, not applications filed, so the divorce count trails the point at which couples separate.

The ABS publishes the series annually. The 2026 figures will be the first to test whether last year's turn in the divorce rate holds.