Chicago Homicide Rate: 2026 Analysis

By Cassandra McBride

Last Updated: Aug 27, 2026

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Cassandra McBride

With a Criminology and Sociology background, Cassandra blends advocacy and research to write data-driven articles on the outdoors, politics, and firearms. A staunch Second Amendment supporter, she empowers women through firearm training. At Ammo.com, her work sheds light on gun deaths, ownership trends, and overlooked angles in gun debates.

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Methodology

This report analyzes murder rates in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, and other U.S. cities with high homicide rates.

Local databases and Chicago Police Department (CPD) press releases were used for city- and neighborhood-specific murder rates, which exclude justifiable homicides and involuntary manslaughter. The FBI’s Crime Data Explorer was used to extract homicide rates from cities across the U.S.

The CDC WONDER database was used to collect homicide rates between 1968 and 2025. However, the WONDER database reports only county-level data.

Note on Per Capita Rates:
Comparing Chicago’s homicide rates to those of other jurisdictions is challenging, as per capita calculations can skew the reality of homicides in smaller jurisdictions. For example, Memphis, TN reported 249 homicides in 2024, whereas Chicago reported nearly twice that many (461) in the same year.

Memphis has a population of 613,207; Chicago, 2,638,698. When one homicide is recorded in Memphis, the per capita rate equals 0.16 per 100,000. Conversely, when one is recorded in Chicago, the per capita rate equals 0.038 per 100,000.

We use per capita rates to explain how likely someone is to be affected by crime across varying population sizes. But Chicago is one of our nation’s most populous cities and must be compared to other large cities to provide an accurate picture of the effects of crime.

Chicago Homicide Rates Per Capita

According to the press release, ‘2025 in Review’ (Jan. 5, 2026), issued by the Chicago Police Department, the murder rate in the city in 2025 was 15.2 per 100,000 with 416 murders. This figure is provisional and may change in future press releases. ⁷

The homicide rate from the CDC WONDER Provisional database in 2025 was 10.6 per 100,000 with 550 deaths reported in Cook County, Illinois. This database includes justifiable and negligent homicides. As with the CPD figure above, this number is provisional. The final 2025 homicide totals will likely be higher once all cases are fully coded in the database. ⁴

Chicago Homicide Rates Per Capita: Year-Over-Year

According to Chicago Police Department year-end press releases, the city’s murder rate increased from 2019 to 2020, peaked in 2021, and then began a gradual decline in 2022. Although 2025 data is provisional, and death counts will likely be higher than what is currently available in future press releases, the CPD is reporting the lowest murder rates in more than a decade. ^{6, 7}

According to the CDC WONDER Database, which does not rely on local law enforcement reporting; rather, it draws upon data from medical examiners, homicide rates (which include justifiable homicides) followed a similar pattern in Cook County. Homicide rates rose from 2019 to 2020 (12.5 to 18.7 per 100,000), peaked in 2021 (20.5 per 100,000), and began a gradual decline in 2022 (18.2 per 100,000). ⁴

The CPD counts above are the department’s own year-end totals. The FBI Crime Data Explorer figures used elsewhere in this report come from a separate, submission-based collection, so the two sets are not directly comparable. ^{1, 6, 7}

How Does Chicago Compare to National Numbers?

Chicago compares differently to other cities depending on their population sizes.

When compared to smaller cities, Chicago looks much safer despite having roughly two and a half times as many homicides. Conversely, when compared to cities with larger populations, Chicago’s homicide rates appear more normalized.

Is Chicago More Dangerous Than Other Cities?

Chicago is the most dangerous city among its peer cities. Of the 11 U.S. cities with populations over 1,000,000 people in 2024, Chicago’s homicide rate ranges from roughly on par with Philadelphia’s to nearly seven times higher than San Diego’s, with most peer cities falling somewhere in between. ¹

Chicago’s homicide rate in 2024 was 17.5 per 100,000 people (including justifiable homicide and involuntary manslaughter), which is more than four times that of New York City and two and a half times higher than Los Angeles. Of the 1 million+ population cities, Philadelphia is the only one that comes close to Chicago’s homicide rate (16.9 per 100,000).

Although cities like Houston and Dallas also have double-digit homicide rates, Chicago is an outlier due to the combination of its large population and high homicide rate.

Note: Although New York and Los Angeles have much higher populations, those cities reported fewer murders than Chicago in 2024.

For state-level context on several of the cities above, see our reports on the Texas murder rate, the California homicide rate and the Florida murder rate.

Comparing Chicago to Smaller Cities

St. Louis, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Memphis, Detroit, and Baltimore are among cities with the highest murder rates in the country. With an average population size of 519,061 between these cities, one homicide has a higher impact on per capita rates than a large metro like Chicago. ¹

The aforementioned six cities had an average murder rate of 36.7 per 100,000 in 2024, and an average of 180.7 total homicides. Had Chicago reported the same number of homicides, its murder rate would have become only 6.85 per 100,000 in the same year. This illustrates the statistical impact of its large population.

In reality, Chicago reported roughly two and a half times the number of murders as smaller cities with higher homicide rates in 2024. Furthermore, the six cities with the highest murder rates also experienced significant declines in homicides over the past year, whereas Chicago’s rate declined far less than its smaller-city peers.

For the opposite end of the range, see our report on the cities with the lowest crime rate.

Homicide Trends in Cook County, IL

Cook County, Illinois (in which Chicago is located) has historically had a murder rate above the national average, often by a wide margin. ^{3, 4, 5}

For this section, we relied on CDC WONDER because it is the most consistent database with regard to accuracy and trends. However, the WONDER database only reports county-level data. It should therefore be understood that the data listed here is representative of the city of Chicago and the surrounding area as well.

Cook County’s rate has been higher, historically, in more peaceful periods than the national average. The national homicide rate bottomed out at 5.0 per 100,000 in 2014. Cook County’s rate remained more than double the national figure at 10.5 per 100,000. Between 2018 and 2024, the national average homicide rate increased by 3.4% (5.8 to 6.0 per 100,000), while Cook County’s increased by 5.3% (13.2 to 13.9 per 100,000).

For how Illinois ranks against the rest of the country, see our report on the states with the highest murder rate, along with our overview of Illinois gun and ammo laws.

Murder in Chicago Neighborhoods

Chicago’s high murder rates affect 63.6% of the city’s communities. Forty-nine of the 77 clearly defined neighborhoods in Chicago have homicide rates above the national average.

West Garfield Park had the highest average murder rate over the past three years at 134 murders per 100,000 people. Greater Grand Crossing had the highest homicide rate over the past year (October 2024-2025) at 93 murders per 100,000. ²

Note: Murders in this section exclude justifiable and involuntary homicide.

For a breakdown of the weapons involved in U.S. homicides, see our report on murders by weapon type, and for a demographic view of the victims, see gun violence among Black Americans.

Wrap-Up

Chicago consistently has more murders than other cities with similar population sizes or higher rates in the United States. Compared to other large metros, the city has much higher homicide rates. However, when compared to smaller cities, Chicago appears to perform better.

We answer the same questions for other jurisdictions in our report on Oregon homicide rates.

Sources

• Offenses Known to Law Enforcement (2024)cde.ucr.cjis.gov
• ABC7 Chicago Neighborhood Safety Trackerabc7chicago.com
• National Center for Health Statistics Mortality Data on CDC WONDERwonder.cdc.gov
• CDC WONDER Provisional Mortality Statisticswonder.cdc.gov
• United States Census Bureaudata.census.gov
• Chicago Police Department: 2022 in Reviewchicagopolice.org
• Chicago Police Department: 2025 in Reviewchicagopolice.org

Written by

Cassandra McBride