Exoplanets Discovered in 2025 by Discovery Method

What this chart shows
The 245 confirmed exoplanets that the NASA Exoplanet Archive lists with a discovery year of 2025, grouped by the technique that found them. Six methods produced at least one planet that year.

How the data is collected
The counts come from the archive's Planetary Systems Composite Parameters table, queried through its Table Access Protocol service on 14 September 2026 with the condition disc_year = 2025. That table holds one row per planet, and each row carries a Discovery Method field. The total can still rise, because the archive adds planets as new papers are accepted.

Background
The archive counts an object as a planet only if its mass, or minimum mass, is no more than 30 Jupiter masses, it is not free floating, and follow-up work has made a false positive unlikely. The results must also be peer reviewed and accepted for publication. When a planet is announced independently in more than one paper, the archive lists the paper accepted first as the discovery paper.

Limits
The archive lists one discovery paper for each planet, and the discovery year should be read together with that reference rather than as the date a signal was first seen. Each planet is credited to one method only, even when several techniques were used to confirm it. Different catalogues use different inclusion rules, and the archive itself warns that other sources may show different numbers.