Chicago recorded 504 new HIV diagnoses in 2025, potentially the lowest annual number on record, according to provisional city data.
The preliminary figure represents a 38% drop from 818 new HIV cases in 2024, according to an Aug. 20 data brief from the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH). The city also recorded 236 new AIDS diagnoses—down 22% from 2024.
The numbers come from data reported to CDPH through June 23, 2026, and final 2025 data will be published in December. If the numbers hold, 2025 would have the lowest number of new HIV diagnoses on record and the lowest number of new AIDS diagnoses since the mid-1980s.
“We should be proud of this progress, but we cannot become complacent,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a statement.
Johnson credited the progress in reducing new HIV diagnoses to years of work among health professionals, community organizations and advocates to expand testing, prevention, treatment and care.
The decline reverses two years of rising HIV diagnoses in Chicago. The city recorded 727 new cases in 2023 and 818 in 2024, after hovering around 630 annually from 2020 through 2022.
“The exact numbers may shift between now and December, but this points in a positive direction for what we expect to confirm near the end of the year,” said CDPH Commissioner Garth Walker, who was appointed to the role in July.
The provisional numbers also showed a steep decline in late or concurrent diagnoses, when a person is diagnosed with HIV and then AIDS within 12 months. CDPH recorded 94 concurrent diagnoses last year, down nearly 50% from 2024.
But stark racial disparities persisted in who was newly diagnosed with HIV.
Hispanic Chicagoans accounted for 171 new diagnoses in 2025, down from 408 in 2024. Hispanic residents accounted for half of all new HIV diagnoses in 2024, compared with 34% in 2025.
Among Black Chicagoans, diagnoses fell from 297 to 235.
Together, Black and Hispanic residents accounted for about 81% of new HIV diagnoses in 2025.
Of the new HIV diagnoses reported in 2025, 86% were among males and 59% were among men who have sex with men. Chicago recorded nearly seven times as many new HIV diagnoses among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men as among people who got HIV through heterosexual contact.
The city also reported that 92% of people receiving HIV care through CDPH-funded programs were virally suppressed in 2025, meaning the amount of HIV in their blood was low enough that they could not sexually transmit the virus.
“This is the window of opportunity to buckle down and focus on getting to zero,” said Ravikiran Bhairavabhotla, CDPH deputy commissioner of the Syndemic Infectious Diseases Bureau. “And we can’t be complacent to mistake progress with success.”