We estimate that there are approximately 496.6 million native Spanish speakers (i.e. people who speak Spanish as their first language, or L1) worldwide in 2025. Here's how we came up with this number:
Our estimate differs slightly from other popular ones. Ethnologue's 2019 Languages of the World report [4], which estimated a total of 460 million first-language Spanish speakers worldwide, is outdated. Instituto Cervantes' 2024 report [3], which estimated a total of 498.5 million first-language Spanish speakers worldwide no longer uses Moreno-Fernandez et al.'s estimates of the percentage of native speakers in each Hispanophone country, and it now calculates it 'according to the updated data provided by the relevant demographic sources'. It also states that the population data for each Hispanophone country has been extracted from the 'information provided by the respective census offices or statistical institutes'.
Here is the data.