List of members of the United Nations Security Council


Membership of the United Nations Security Council is held by the five Permanent members of [the United Nations Security Council|permanent members] and ten elected, non-permanent members.
Being elected requires a two-thirds majority vote from the United Nations General Assembly. Elected members hold their place on the council for a two-year term, with five seats contested in even years and five seats contested in odd years. An outgoing member cannot be immediately re-elected.
Elections usually begin in June for a term starting January 1. Because of the two-thirds majority requirement, it is possible for two evenly matched candidates to deadlock with approximately half the vote each, sometimes needing weeks of negotiations to resolve.
Non-permanent seats are distributed geographically, with a certain number of seats allocated to each of the five United Nations Regional Groups.

Current membership

;Permanent members of the [United Nations Security Council|Permanent members]
CountryRegional GroupMember since
ChinaDate|1971-10-25

Regional Groups

The ten non-permanent seats have the following distribution:
In addition, one of the five African/Asian seats is an Arab country, alternating between the two groups. This rule was added in 1967 for it to be applied beginning with 1968.
;Electoral timetable
Term beginning in years that are:OddEven
African Groupone membertwo members *
Asia-Pacific Groupone memberone member *
Eastern European Groupnoneone member
Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)one memberone member
Western European and Others Grouptwo membersnone

* The representative of Arab nations alternates between these two spaces.
The odd/even distribution was effectively decided by the January 1946 [United Nations Security Council election|January 1946] and 1965 United Nations [Security Council election|1965] elections. For each of the six and four members in the newly created seats, the UN General Assembly voted to grant either a 1-year or 2-year term.

Previous Security Council composition

From 1946 to 1965, the Security Council had six non-permanent members. Due to a lack of African and Asian member states, the seats had the following distribution:
  • Latin America: 2 members
  • Commonwealth of Nations: 1 member
  • Eastern Europe: 1 member
  • Middle East: 1 member
  • Western Europe: 1 member
As decolonization increased the number of Asian and African member states without a group, they began to contest other seats: Ivory Coast substituted a member of the Commonwealth in 1964–1965, the Eastern European seat regularly included Asian countries from 1956, Liberia took the place of a Western European country in 1961, and Mali successfully contested the Middle Eastern seat in December 1964.
An amendment to the UN Charter ratified in 1965 increased the number of non-permanent seats to 10, and the Regional Groups were formalized. The amendment effectively created three African seats and one Asian seat.

Membership by year

Non-permanent (1966–present)

The African Union uses an internal rotation system to distribute seats based on its subregions:
Aside from the Asia-Pacific Group also allocating an Arab nation seat every four years, other regional groups do not have their own subregional rotation systems. The Arab nation seat is starred below.
The Western European and Others Group in part contains three caucusing subgroups, whose candidates informally coordinate with each other. While this has not resulted in a stable rotation system, it effectively guarantees that both seats will never be occupied by a single subgroup at the same time.


List by number of years as Security Council member

This list contains the 139 United Nations member states so far elected to the United Nations Security Council, including the five permanent members, all listed by number of years each country has so far spent on the UNSC. Of all the members, 6 have so far ceased to exist, leaving the list with 133 modern nations. These, combined with the 60 modern nations that have never been elected to the UNSC to date, make up the 193 current members of the UN.
Years on the Security Council, as of 2026, including current year where relevant :
YearsCountryFirst YearMost Recent YearRegional GroupNotes
81France

UN members that have never been Security Council members

This is a list of the 60 member nations that have never been members of the Security Council. The three former UN members that were not elected to the Security Council during their membership are Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Serbia and Montenegro.
UN Member stateRegional GroupSecurity Council membership as part of another entity
Islamic Republic of Afghanistan