World Obesity Day 2025: Key outcomes and impact

On 4 March 2025, the world came together once again to mark World Obesity Day – a global moment to advocate for better prevention, treatment, and understanding of obesity.

This year’s campaign, Changing Systems, Healthier Lives, sparked a bold and necessary shift in narrative: moving the spotlight away from individuals and placing it firmly on the systems that shape our health.

Led by the World Obesity Federation and supported by members, advocates, professionals, and people with lived experience, World Obesity Day 2025 called for urgent systemic change – in healthcare, policy, food environments, media, and the places we live and work.

Campaign reach and digital highlights

Despite a challenging media environment and compressed timelines, the campaign achieved powerful reach and digital engagement. Here are some of the highlights:

• Engagement from 187 countries
• Twitter/X: 5.95 million impressions on published content and 216.5 million impressions across the campaign hashtags
• LinkedIn: Record high total reach: 2.054 million
• Facebook: 95,071 total reach
• Instagram: 712,562 total impressions across our posts
• World Obesity Day website: 77,543 page views and 255,585 total interactions

The flagship campaign video, Changing Systems, Healthier Lives, along with regional case study videos from South Africa, the USA, and Trinidad & Tobago, helped amplify the call to transform the systems driving the obesity crisis.

Member-led action: Seed grants and other national highlights

The World Obesity Federation Seed Grants Initiative enabled six countries to organise impactful WOD events under the 2025 theme. In addition, World Obesity Day 2025 was marked by dozens of additional member-led events around the globe. Here are some highlights of these events:

Spotlight on the 2025 World Obesity Atlas

Launched on World Obesity Day, the 2025 World Obesity Atlas highlighted the ongoing rise in obesity worldwide, especially in low middle-income countries. The report revealed that 1.6 million premature deaths annually are now linked to overweight and obesity.

With projections through 2030 and analysis of national policies, the Atlas was featured in major media including The Guardian, BBC Today, Devex, Reuters, and Euronews.

Download the 2025 Atlas here in English, Chinese or Brazillian Portuguese:

Funding support

World Obesity Federation commits a portion of its core funding to WOD each year, with additional support from external sponsors.

Our 2025 campaign was supported by:

• Eli Lilly
• Vivus
• Amgen
• Currax
• IFA Celtics
• Pfizer
• Regeneron
• Boehringer Ingelheim
• Johnson & Johnson MedTech
• Novo Nordisk
• Wave Life Sciences

While our supporters have contributed to the funding of the World Obesity Day 2025 campaign, they have no influence on content or execution of the campaign.

Looking Ahead

World Obesity Day 2025 marked an important evolution in the movement by placing greater emphasis on the systems driving the obesity crisis. Despite some challenges with late theme development and unexpected press competition, the campaign still achieved strong results – thanks to the creativity, energy, and dedication of our global network.

As we look to 2026, we’ll take forward key learnings: starting earlier to give members more time to engage, planning proactive media strategies, and expanding support for local action through the Seed Grant initiative. These improvements will help us strengthen future campaigns and deepen impact across sectors.

With continued collaboration, and clear calls for change, we’re building momentum toward a future where health systems, environments, and policies truly support healthier lives for all.