2026 Bankruptcy Filing Surge: Which States Are Rising Fastest

U.S. bankruptcy filings hit 591,850 in the 12 months ending March 31, 2026 — up 11.9% from 529,080 the year before, per the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Broken out by state, the increase is nearly universal: North Dakota (+34%), Alaska (+34%), and D.C. (+33%) lead in percentage terms, Florida and Texas lead in raw volume, and Maine is the only state we cover that actually filed fewer bankruptcies than a year earlier.

Rising fastest: the 10 states with the sharpest increase

Highest raw volume

Considering bankruptcy yourself? See how the Chapter 7 means test works and where mortgage distress is worst — filings often follow the same regional pressure points. See the 2026 debt collection complaint surge for how this compares to what consumers are reporting directly to the CFPB.

Full state ranking

Methodology

Source: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Table F-5A ("Business and Nonbusiness Bankruptcy Cases Commenced, by County and Chapter of the Bankruptcy Code"), for the 12-month periods ending March 31, 2025 and March 31, 2026. State totals here are aggregated by summing each state's counties from the county-level table, which lands about 400 filings (roughly 0.07%) under the AOUSC's own published national total of 591,850 — an immaterial rounding/territory-handling difference at state granularity.

What this measures: actual bankruptcy petitions filed in federal court, not distress that hasn't reached a filing, not debt collection activity, and not a projection. States with fewer than 50 filings in the 2025 baseline period are excluded from percentage-change rankings to avoid large percentages off tiny denominators. Raw filing counts aren't population-adjusted, so larger states appear disproportionately in the volume ranking — the percentage-change ranking is the fairer cross-state comparison.