Kidney and renal pelvis cancer is estimated to account for 80,450 new U.S. cases and 15,160 deaths in 2026. Distant-stage disease, the category most closely aligned with metastatic cancer in these statistics, accounts for 15% of cases and has a 20.3% five-year relative survival. The figures below are U.S. statistics from the SEER Cancer Stat Facts: Kidney and Renal Pelvis Cancer source; estimates for 2026 are identified separately from measurements based on earlier periods.
On this page
- The main metastatic kidney cancer numbers
- Survival by stage
- How common kidney cancer is
- Age and sex patterns
- Rates by race and ethnicity
- How incidence and mortality have changed
The main metastatic kidney cancer numbers
The SEER Cancer Stat Facts: Kidney and Renal Pelvis Cancer estimates 80,450 new kidney and renal pelvis cancer cases in the United States in 2026. The same source estimates 15,160 deaths in 2026. These are estimates for the calendar year, rather than a count of cases or deaths already observed.
Kidney and renal pelvis cancer is estimated to represent 3.8% of all new U.S. cancer cases in 2026 and 2.4% of all U.S. cancer deaths. Across all stages, the five-year relative survival is 79.2%, based on cases diagnosed from 2016 through 2022. Relative survival compares people with cancer with similar people in the general population; it is a population statistic and does not predict an individual person’s outcome.
For the stage category that most directly reflects metastatic spread in this dataset, distant-stage kidney and renal pelvis cancer accounts for 15% of cases. Its five-year relative survival is 20.3%. This figure describes people in the distant-stage group as a whole and should not be read as a personal forecast. The supplied SEER figures do not provide a separate breakdown by individual metastatic organ, treatment, tumor subtype, or current therapy.
The overall age-adjusted incidence rate is 18.0 new cases per 100,000 people per year. The age-adjusted death rate is 3.4 deaths per 100,000 people per year. Age adjustment allows rates from populations with different age structures to be compared more consistently, but it does not describe the risk for a particular person.
Survival by stage
Stage is one of the clearest ways these statistics distinguish localized, regional, and distant disease. The stage distribution and five-year relative survival figures reported by the SEER Cancer Stat Facts source are:
| SEER stage | Share of cases | Five-year relative survival |
|---|---|---|
| Localized | 66% | 93.6% |
| Regional | 17% | 77.6% |
| Distant | 15% | 20.3% |
| Unstaged | 3% | 55.2% |
The percentages describe the share of kidney and renal pelvis cancer cases assigned to each stage category. The survival figures are five-year relative survival estimates, not the percentage of people who are cured and not a prediction for every person with that stage.
Localized disease accounts for 66% of cases and has a five-year relative survival of 93.6% in the SEER figures. Regional disease accounts for 17% of cases and has a five-year relative survival of 77.6%. Distant-stage disease accounts for 15% of cases and has a five-year relative survival of 20.3%. A further 3% of cases are unstaged, with a reported five-year relative survival of 55.2%.
The stage categories are not interchangeable with every clinical use of the word metastatic. In general, distant-stage disease is the category used here for cancer that has spread to distant parts of the body. The supplied statistics do not state how many people in the distant-stage group have one metastatic site, several sites, recurrent disease, or a particular treatment history.
How common kidney cancer is
The 2026 estimate of 80,450 new kidney and renal pelvis cancer cases places the disease at 3.8% of all new cancer cases in the United States. The estimate of 15,160 deaths places it at 2.4% of all U.S. cancer deaths. Both figures are labeled estimates for 2026 by the SEER Cancer Stat Facts source.
The age-adjusted incidence rate is 18.0 per 100,000 people per year, while the age-adjusted death rate is 3.4 per 100,000 people per year. These rates summarize the U.S. population rather than the probability that an individual will develop or die from kidney cancer.
The median age at diagnosis is 65 years. The median age at death is 73 years. Age distributions show that people ages 65 to 74 account for 30.2% of new cases, people ages 55 to 64 account for 25.4%, people ages 75 to 84 account for 17.2%, and people older than 84 account for 5.1% of new cases.
The corresponding reported age shares among deaths are 29.5% for ages 65 to 74, 27.7% for ages 75 to 84, and 16.7% for people older than 84. The supplied figures do not list every age band, so these percentages should not be treated as a complete age distribution.
Age and sex patterns
For all races combined, the kidney and renal pelvis cancer incidence rate is 24.4 per 100,000 per year among males and 12.3 per 100,000 per year among females. The death rate is 5.0 per 100,000 per year among males and 2.1 per 100,000 per year among females.
| Group | Incidence rate per 100,000 per year | Death rate per 100,000 per year |
|---|---|---|
| Males, all races | 24.4 | 5.0 |
| Females, all races | 12.3 | 2.1 |
These are age-adjusted rates for the categories reported by the SEER Cancer Stat Facts source. They show a higher reported population rate among males than females for both incidence and mortality. They do not explain why the rates differ, and they do not provide a metastatic-only comparison by sex.
The age distribution also differs between diagnosis and death in the supplied summary. Diagnosis is concentrated in the 55-to-74 age ranges listed above, while the reported death shares include a larger proportion of people ages 75 to 84 and older than 84. Median ages provide another summary: 65 at diagnosis and 73 at death.
Rates by race and ethnicity
The source reports sex-specific incidence and death rates for several racial and ethnic groups. All rates below are per 100,000 people per year and refer to kidney and renal pelvis cancer in the listed group, not specifically to distant-stage disease.
Among non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Native people, the incidence rate is 37.4 for males and 20.0 for females. The death rate is 9.2 for males and 3.8 for females.
Among non-Hispanic Asian/Pacific Islander people, the incidence rate is 12.7 for males and 5.9 for females. The death rate is 2.4 for males and 1.0 for females.
Among non-Hispanic Black people, the incidence rate is 26.8 for males and 13.3 for females. The death rate is 4.9 for males and 2.1 for females.
Among non-Hispanic White people, the incidence rate is 25.1 for males and 12.0 for females. The death rate is 5.3 for males and 2.2 for females.
The comparison is descriptive: it reports the rates supplied for each group and sex. The figures do not establish causes for differences between groups, and they do not indicate whether the same pattern applies to metastatic disease alone. No additional race or ethnicity categories, stage-specific breakdowns, or treatment explanations are included in the supplied SEER summary.
How incidence and mortality have changed
The age-adjusted kidney and renal pelvis cancer incidence rate rose by an average of 0.7% per year over 2014 through 2023, according to the SEER Cancer Stat Facts source. The age-adjusted death rate fell by an average of 1.1% per year over 2015 through 2024. These are average annual changes over the stated periods, not a claim that the rate changed by exactly the same amount in every year.
The source also reports observed incidence rates from the SEER 8 registry area for selected years. These figures use the SEER 8 geography and therefore should not be read as the national age-adjusted rates shown earlier:
| Year | Observed SEER 8 incidence rate per 100,000 |
|---|---|
| 1975 | 6.83 |
| 2000 | 12.04 |
| 2016 | 16.06 |
| 2019 | 16.74 |
| 2023 | 16.73 |
The observed SEER 8 incidence rate was 6.83 per 100,000 in 1975, 12.04 in 2000, 16.06 in 2016, 16.74 in 2019, and 16.73 in 2023. These selected observations show the values reported for those years and geography; they are not a complete annual series and do not by themselves explain the causes of change.
Taken together, the figures describe a disease with a substantial localized share at diagnosis, a smaller distant-stage share, and markedly different five-year relative survival by stage. The same source reports rising average incidence over 2014–2023 and falling average mortality over 2015–2024, while the 2026 case and death totals remain estimates rather than finalized counts.