There are six official languages used in United Nations (UN) meetings and in which the UN writes and publishes all its official documents. In 1946, five languages were chosen as official languages of the UN: English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Chinese. In 1971, the United Nations' use of Traditional Chinese characters was replaced with Simplified Chinese characters. In 1973, Arabic was voted to be an additional official language. As of 2026, the official languages of the United Nations are:
English (British English with Oxford spelling), in English Latin alphabet; French (Metropolitan French) in French Latin alphabet; Spanish (Peninsular Spanish) in Spanish Latin alphabet; Russian (Moscow Russian) in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet; Chinese (Standard Mandarin / ) in Simplified Chinese characters; Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic) in Naskh / Arabic abjad.
According to the UN Charter each of these six languages is equally authoritative although English and French have traditionally received preferential status and are the only two official and working languages of the UN Secretariat. It is an unspoken rule that the UN Secretary General and other high ranking United Nations officials must be fluent (at least C1Advanced fluency level according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages / CEFRL) in at least English and French. The UN has struggled to provide parity of all 6 languages as the English language has become the dominant world language in the digital age.
Multiple UN Secretaries General, including Kofi Annan, Ban Ki Moon and Antonio Guterres, have worked to improve multilingualism within the UN. This work has culminated in additional funding for the UN Translation Service, the creation of the Coordinator for Multilingualism role, UN Language Days, and starting in 2018, the UN News website providing translations into non-official languages such as Portuguese, Swahili, Hindi, and Urdu in addition to the official languages. These and many of the non-official languages used by the United Nations often represent the Global South. Rule 57 allows the General Assembly or any subcommittee to utilize any language other than the languages of the Assembly. As of 2025, the United Nations and UNESCO have not formally ratified the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights.
Description These languages are used at meetings of various UN organs, particularly the General Assembly (Article 51 of its Rules of Procedure), the Economic and Social Council and the Security Council (Article 41 of its Rules of Procedure). Each representative of a country may speak in any one of these six languages or may speak in any language and provide interpretation into one of the six official languages. The UN provides simultaneous interpretation from any official language into the other five official languages, via the United Nations Interpretation Service.
The six official languages are also used for the dissemination of official documents. Generally, the texts in each of the six languages are equally authoritative.
Working languages Most UN councils use all six languages as official and working languages. However, as of 2023 the United Nations Secretariat uses only two working languages: English and French, which are also the two official working languages of the International Court of Justice.
Initially, only English and French were working languages, and the Rules of Procedure stated that speeches in official languages (working or non-working) were to be interpreted only into the working languages. If a country wanted to give a speech in a non-official language and provide an interpretation, the interpretation had to be in a working language. Meeting transcriptions were to be provided in the working languages, with translations into official non-working languages available upon request. Resolutions and meeting summaries were to be provided in all of the official languages. This distinction continued as more official languages became working languages. The distinction was removed after all official languages became working languages.
Language reach The six official languages spoken at the UN are the first or second language of 2.8 billion people on the planet, less than half of the world population. The six languages are official languages in almost two-thirds of United Nations member states (over 120 states):
Official languages of the United Nations, Ethnologue, 2026
UN official language facts (speakers are in millions). Prose L1/L2 Sum Nations UN (General Assembly/Secretariat) Regulating method Branch Glottolog/LinguasphereEnglish (eng) 390/1138 1528 90 OW/OW British English/NA Germanic stan1293/52-ABA French (fra) 74/238 312 50 OW/OW Metropolitan French/Académie Française Romance stan1290/51-AAA Spanish (spa) 498/74 572 22 OW/O (Spanish / Castilian)/Royal Spanish Academy Romance stan1288/51-AAA-b Russian (rus) 145/65 210 5 OW/O Central Russian/Russian Language Institute Slavic russ1263/53-AAA-e Arabic dialects (ara) 20/335 355 23 OW/O Modern Standard Arabic/Academy of the Arabic Language Semitic (stan1318/arab1395)/12-AAC Chinese (cnm) 990/194 1184 3 OW/O Mandarin Chinese/Ministry of Education Sinitic mand1415/79-AAA-b
History In 1920, the League of Nations was one of the first international institutions to promote the concept of international official languages to foster communication and spur global diplomacy in the aftermath of the brutality of World War I. The League of Nations selected English, French, and Spanish as official languages with English and French being the working languages. English and French were chosen due to the global reach of the British Empire and the French Empire. Spanish was selected due to the large number of first-language speakers in Hispanic America and the former Spanish Empire. There was an effort to select Esperanto as an additional language of the League, but that was rejected.
In the 1940s, as the conclusion of World War II was nearing, the Allies held a multitude of conferences, including the London Declaration, the Arcadia Conference, the Cairo Conference, the Tehran Conference, the Yalta Conference and the Potsdam Conference. These conferences were meant to coordinate and plan the post-war world, including how to promote world peace in the aftermath of the war, how to facilitate global communication through an international auxiliary language (such as Esperanto) or an existing group of languages, and how to handle the decolonization of Africa and Asia. Additionally, these conferences led to the establishment of the United Nations as the successor of the League of Nations.
In 1945, this culminated in the Charter of the UN, its constituent document signed at the San Francisco Conference, which did not expressly provide for official languages. The Charter was initially enacted in five languages (English, French, Mandarin, Russian, and Spanish). The United Nations selected these original five languages because in addition to being utilized by the League of Nations, they were also the de facto official languages of the major Allied nations, including the Big Four: the British Empire, the United States, the Soviet Union and the Republic of China plus French which was the language of France and the French colonies. These nations: the UK, the US, the USSR, Republic of China, and France, became the five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council. Unofficially, the UN held its operations in English and French; however, the Charter provided (in Article 111) that the five languages be equally authoritative.
On 1 February 1946, the first session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted rules of procedure concerning languages that purported to apply to "all the organs of the United Nations, other than the International Court of Justice", formally setting out five (5) official languages and two (2) working languages (English and French).General Assembly Resolution 2 (I) Rules of Procedure Concerning Languages, 1 February 1946. On 24 June 1946, the Security Council formally also set the five official languages and two working languages.
The following year, the second session of the General Assembly adopted permanent rules of procedure, Resolution 173 (II). The part of those rules relating to language closely followed the 1946 rules, except that the 1947 rules did not purport to apply to other UN organs, just the General Assembly. Meanwhile, a proposal had been in the works to add Spanish as a third working language in addition to English and French.
On 11 December 1948, the General Assembly added Spanish as a working language.Resolution 262 (III)
On 21 December 1968, the General Assembly added Russian as a working language.Resolution 2479 (XXIII) Inclusion of Russian among the working languages of the General Assembly (amendment to rule 51 of the rules of procedure of the General Assembly) and question of including Russian and Spanish among the working languages of the Security Council (21 December 1968)
On 22 January 1969, the Security Council added Spanish and Russian as working languages.
In October 1971, the Republic of China (Taiwan) was expelled and replaced with the People's Republic of China. The ROC uses Traditional Chinese characters while the PRC (on the mainland) uses Simplified Chinese characters; the United Nations consequently switched from Traditional Chinese to Simplified Chinese around the end of 1971. The last General Assembly resolution of the 1971 session (resolution number 2903, adopted 22 December 1971, transcribed 1972) is written in Traditional Chinese, while the first General Assembly resolution of the 1972 session (resolution number 2904, adopted 26 September 1972, transcribed 1973) is written in Simplified Chinese. Conversely, as full meeting records presumably take longer to transcribe, the General Assembly meeting record of (for example) 24 September 1968 was not transcribed until 1971 and is written in Simplified Chinese.)
On 18 December 1973, the General Assembly made Mandarin a working language. They also added Arabic as both an official language and working language of the GA. Thus all six official languages were also working languages. Arabic was made an official and working language of "the General Assembly and its Main Committees", whereas the other five languages had status in all GA committees and subcommittees (not just the main committees). The Arab members of the UN had agreed to pay the costs of implementing the resolution, for three years. On 17 December 1980, the General Assembly removed this final distinction, making Arabic an official and working language of all its committees and subcommittees, as of 1 January 1982. At the same time, the GA requested the Security Council to include Arabic among its official and working languages, and the Economic and Social Council to include Arabic among its official languages, by 1 January 1983.
On 17 January 1974, the Security Council added Chinese as a working language.
On 21 December 1982, the Security Council added Arabic as an official and working language.
In the Economic and Social Council, as of 1992, there were six official languages (Arabic, English, French, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish) of which three were working languages (English, French, and Spanish).Rules of Procedure of the Economic and Social Council rules 32 to 35. Arabic was added as an official language on 15 April 1982. Later, Arabic, Mandarin, and Russian were added as working languages in the Economic and Social Council.