The World Factbook — archive

What you can find

The CIA announced the World Factbook's sunset on February 4, 2026. Treat its country profiles as historical reference material. The old official archive routes now redirect to that announcement. There is no basis in that notice for assigning a cause beyond what it says.

Try this first

Open the 1990 edition preserved by Project Gutenberg, a third-party transcription of the CIA publication. Archive edition: 1990; reviewed September 15, 2026. Pick a country and note the year attached to its population estimate. Compare its definition with a current World Bank series before comparing values. Do not treat the edition year as the observation year for every entry.

Access and reuse

The CIA site policy describes copying public material, crediting the agency and creators, and checking exceptions. Archive hosts also have their own terms and may provide altered formats. Keep the historical source and archive host distinct in your citation.

Provenance

Retain the edition, country heading, estimate year, original publisher, and archive link. If a definition or boundary changed, describe that change before calculating a difference. An old snapshot can reveal how information was organized as well as what was reported.