OPEC Members in 2026: Who Is In, Who Left, and When

OPEC has 11 members as of October 23, 2026: Algeria, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The United Arab Emirates left on May 1, 2026, Angola left on January 1, 2024, and Qatar and Ecuador left in 2019 and 2020. Any list that shows 12, 13 or 15 members was written before one of those dates. The count of 11 rests on the EIA's October 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook, which lists 11 members, and on the EIA's country brief and Associated Press reporting of the UAE announcement; opec.org could not be read for this page, and OPEC's own member list may not yet reflect the change.

The ledger below covers who belongs, when each country joined or left, and why published counts disagree. Quotas and what the group does with them are left to the OPEC+ explainer, and unused capacity to the spare capacity guide.

The 11 members, with their weight in the group

The table ranks today’s members by 2025 crude oil production, using the EIA’s October 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook. The two production columns are crude oil only, in million barrels per day, so they will differ from totals that add natural gas liquids or condensate. The last column shows whether the country has a target under the OPEC+ cooperation agreement, a separate question from membership.

Concentration is the first thing the table shows. Saudi Arabia alone produced 37.9% of the group’s 2025 crude, and the four Gulf founders together (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Kuwait) produced 19.53 million barrels per day, or 79.3%. The three smallest members, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the Republic of the Congo, were all admitted or readmitted since 2016 and together produced just 0.53 million barrels per day in 2025. Membership is one vote per country on paper, but the production weights are very uneven, which is why one large exit changes the group’s statistics far more than a small one.

The OPEC+ column matters when you compare totals. Eight of the 11 members are subject to the cooperation agreement, and Iran, Libya and Venezuela are not. The 2025 crude of the eight is 19.02 million barrels per day by this table’s rows, against the 19.03 the EIA publishes, again a rounding difference. Add the 14.30 from the ten non-OPEC participants and you reach the published OPEC+ total of 33.33.

Every entry and exit, in order

The record is more than a list of joiners and leavers. Three countries have left and returned (Ecuador, Gabon and Indonesia), which is why a bare count of five former members, the UAE included, understates how often the roster has changed. The membership count after each event is below. It is this page’s running tally of the dated entries, and it ends where the EIA’s October 2026 table does, at 11.

Read the count column as a story in three acts. From 1960 to 1975 the group grew steadily from 5 to 13 as producers joined. From 1992 to 1995 two members stepped away. By 2007 Angola’s entry and Ecuador’s return had taken it to 13, and Indonesia’s 2009 suspension brought it back to 12. Between 2016 and 2018, Indonesia’s short return, Gabon’s return and two new African members took it to 15, the peak. Since 2019 every change has been a departure: Qatar, Ecuador, Angola, the UAE. Four exits in seven years, with no entry in that period, is the pattern behind headlines about a shrinking group. It is a count of members, not of influence, which Table 1 shows is concentrated in a few countries.

Who was in OPEC on a given date

Searches for OPEC members in a particular year are common, and the answer changes more often than most lists admit. This table rebuilds the roster at ten dates from the entries above, so the count in each row matches Table 2.

By the end of 2018 the roster had 15 names, including Qatar, Ecuador and Angola, none of which is a member today. By the end of 2023 it had 13; Angola and the UAE are the two names on that roster that have since left. A claim about what OPEC did in a given year should be read against the roster of that year, not today’s.

The departures, with the reasons that were given

Quota friction appears in four of the six rows (Indonesia twice, Angola, and the UAE), and the same constraint that members accept when they join is what several cite when they go. Qatar and Ecuador are different: one reallocating toward gas, the other citing public finances. None of the six departures involved a member with the production weight of Saudi Arabia. The UAE’s did involve a producer of 3.8 million barrels per day of crude and condensate in 2025, which is why its exit moved the group’s statistics in a way the smaller exits did not.

What the UAE’s exit did to the group’s numbers

The EIA’s country brief says the UAE joined OPEC in 1967, was the fourth-largest OPEC producer of total liquid fuels in 2025, and left beginning May 1, 2026. It also reports crude oil and condensate production of 3.8 million barrels per day in 2025, an estimated production capacity of 4.15 million barrels per day (ADNOC reports 4.85), and proven reserves of 120 billion barrels in OPEC’s 2026 Annual Statistical Bulletin. The figures matter here only for their effect on the OPEC total.

The comparison shows that on paper the 11-member OPEC accounts for about 31.2% of 2025 world crude, against roughly 36.0% with the UAE, a difference of about 4.8 percentage points. It also explains a common source of confusion. A statistic such as OPEC’s share, or the group’s spare capacity, can change on May 1 without a single barrel moving, simply because the definition did. The EIA restated its history on the 11-member basis, as the spare capacity guide notes, so an older edition of the same table can show different totals. The guide to OPEC’s monthly report covers checking which country list a given table uses before comparing totals across months.

How a country joins or leaves

The OPEC Statute is the rulebook. As quoted in a copy of OPEC’s membership text, it says that any country with a substantial net export of crude petroleum, which has fundamentally similar interests to those of Member Countries, may become a Full Member if accepted by a majority of three-fourths of Full Members, including the concurring votes of all Founder Members. The same text defines three categories. Founder Members are the countries represented at the first Conference in Baghdad in September 1960 that signed the founding agreement, Full Members are the founders plus countries whose applications the Conference has accepted, and Associate Members are countries that do not qualify for full membership but are admitted under special conditions.

Three consequences follow. First, the founders hold an effective veto on admissions, because their votes must all concur. Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela are all still members, so all five founders would have to concur in any admission today. Second, the two named criteria, a substantial net export and fundamentally similar interests, are judgments rather than numbers, so the vote is political. Third, the Statute as quoted does not describe exit in detail. In practice the record above shows two forms: a suspension, which Ecuador, Gabon and Indonesia used and then reversed, and a withdrawal, which Qatar, Ecuador in 2020, Angola and the UAE announced with an effective date. Suspended members were later readmitted, so the label matters when you count former members.

The copy of OPEC’s membership text used here is an undated reproduction hosted by a university history department, because opec.org returned a bot-challenge page to automated requests during this research. Its country table is out of date, showing 13 members and Angola but not Equatorial Guinea or the Republic of the Congo. The Statute quotation and the category definitions are the parts relied on.

Belonging does not mean being bound

Being a member and accepting a production target are separate things, and the record shows it more than once. Iran, Libya and Venezuela are full members today with no target in the cooperation agreement. Before that, Wikipedia’s account says Iraq stayed a member throughout but that its production was not part of OPEC quota agreements from 1998 to 2016, because of its political difficulties. Membership also has a price: the same account says Ecuador withdrew in December 1992 partly because it was unwilling to pay the annual US$2 million membership fee and felt it needed to produce more than its quota allowed. The cost of belonging, the quota, and the benefit of the group’s price influence are weighed by each government, a trade-off that several departing governments described in terms of quotas or costs.

Members versus OPEC+ participants

OPEC+ is a larger coalition. It consists of the OPEC members that accept production targets plus ten other producers. Mixing the two is the most common mistake in articles about the group, and it changes the arithmetic of every share.

The practical rule is to ask which of the three rows a figure describes. A headline claim that OPEC controls a given share of supply, a quota decision announced by eight countries, and a statement about the 18-country OPEC+ production total refer to three different populations. Wikipedia’s list of OPEC+ members adds Brazil to the participants; the EIA’s table note does not list it, so any total built from another list will not match the EIA’s 33.33. Choose a source and keep its definition for the whole comparison. For how the combined group sets and polices its targets, read the OPEC+ explainer.

Why published lists disagree

Dates for the same event differ between respectable sources, and the differences are not mistakes so much as different choices about what to count. The table shows examples found while building this page.

Table 8 turns the arithmetic of Table 2 into a quick test for any roster you find. Count the members it lists and look the number up: the window shows when that list would have been right.

Where each member’s story continues on this site

Several of the 11 and the six departed countries have their own profiles, which cover production, exports and fiscal terms. Start with Saudi Arabia, the group’s largest producer; Iraq and Kuwait, the next largest Gulf members; Nigeria, the largest African member; and, for the departed, Angola, Ecuador and the UAE. The profiles carry their own check dates; where one mentions membership, test it against Table 2 above.

Data and sources: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Short-Term Energy Outlook, Table 3d, World Crude Oil Production, October 2026 (released October 6, 2026), checked October 23, 2026 (members’ 2025 and 2026 production, OPEC, OPEC+ and world totals, notes b, c and d). EIA, Country Analysis Brief: United Arab Emirates, July 2026, checked October 23, 2026 (joined OPEC in 1967; departed beginning May 1, 2026; 3.8 million b/d crude and condensate in 2025; capacity estimates; 120 billion barrels of reserves from OPEC’s 2026 Annual Statistical Bulletin). EIA, Country Analysis Brief: Angola, February 26, 2025, checked October 23, 2026 (OPEC member since 2007; left effective January 1, 2024; quota cut from 1.3 to 1.1 million b/d). Associated Press via PBS, United Arab Emirates will leave OPEC on May 1, April 28, 2026, checked October 23, 2026 (exit from OPEC and OPEC+; membership since 1967 through Abu Dhabi). CNN, OPEC Fast Facts, version of April 7, 2026, checked October 23, 2026 (member and former-member years; dates of Indonesia, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Congo, Qatar, Ecuador and Angola changes). Wikipedia, OPEC, checked October 23, 2026 (compiled history with cited news reports; used for the 1992 and 1995 suspensions, Indonesia’s 2008 and 2016 moves and the 11-country current list; treated as a secondary compilation). OPEC membership text, copy hosted by Hurst History, undated, checked October 23, 2026 (Statute wording on admission and the three membership categories). opec.org returned a bot-challenge page to automated requests on October 23, 2026, so no figure here is taken from OPEC’s own site. Shares, running member counts and the stale-list windows are this page’s arithmetic.