August 2026
Sperm donor shortages: rising demand meets tighter donor limits. Australia and Sweden are facing sperm donor shortages just as Europe considers implementing tighter international donor limits. What will this mean for fertility patients and donor availability?
The fertility sector may be approaching a difficult crossroads as demand for donor sperm is increasing and many countries already cannot recruit enough donors. Patients are increasingly looking internationally for donor sperm.
At the same time, regulators and professional organisations are moving towards tighter controls on how many families can be created from each individual donor. Both developments are understandable, but when considering both developments together, they create a question that fertility policymakers, clinics and sperm banks increasingly need to confront: If every donor can help fewer families, where will the additional donors come from?
Recent developments in Australia, Sweden, Canada, England and across Europe suggest that this is rapidly becoming one of the major challenges facing 3rd party assisted reproduction, where people are having children with the help of a donor.
Australia: demand has almost doubled
Australia provides one of the clearest examples of the growing imbalance between demand and donor supply. Figures from Genea Fertility show that demand for donor sperm increased by 97.6% between 2022 and 2025. Genea also reports that only around 2% of men who apply to become donors are eventually approved, following the medical, counselling and regulatory process.
The shortage is being compounded by increasingly restrictive family limits. In New South Wales, one sperm donor is now limited to creating five families worldwide. Other Australian jurisdictions operate different limits, creating a fragmented national system. The intention behind such limits is understandable: preventing very large donor-sibling groups and protecting donor-conceived people.
But there is an unavoidable mathematical consequence: The fewer families each donor can help, the more donors are required to provide the same number of treatments. Australia is already seeing the consequence, as Genea reports that approximately 49% of Australians accessing donor sperm are now sourcing it internationally, while overseas donor sperm can cost up to AUD $10,000 for a minimum order.
In other words, when domestic donor capacity falls short, patients and fertility providers increasingly look beyond national borders. And Australia is not alone.
Sweden: only around 15 out of 100 prospective donors are approved
A nationwide review by Swedish news agency TT, published by Hallandsposten, found significant shortages of sperm donors in several parts of Sweden, with long waiting times for treatment. At Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, specialist physician Sara Malchau Lauesgaard told TT that of every 100 prospective sperm donors, only around 15 are eventually selected. Compared with commercially operating sperm banks this is even a high figures as most banks report max. 5-10% of all sperm donor candidates are approved.
Potential donors may be excluded because of factors including hereditary diseases, certain medication use, lifestyle and lacking sperm quality. The assessment process itself is also demanding and time-consuming. Swedish clinics are trying to improve recruitment through social media, Instagram, videos and university outreach, but shortages remain in several regions. Perhaps the most interesting development is occurring in Stockholm.
Because of donor shortages, Karolinska University Hospital has for more than a year been obtaining sperm from Denmark in addition to using its own donors for regionally funded treatments. Swedish legal requirements continue to apply irrespective of where the sperm originates. This is important.
International donor sperm is sometimes discussed as if it were simply an additional consumer choice. But when a leading public university hospital starts using imported sperm because domestic supply is insufficient, cross-border donation becomes something different: part of the infrastructure required to maintain access to fertility treatment.
Sweden is also asking the next important question: who is keeping count?
The Swedish story raises another issue that is increasingly important as donor sperm crosses borders. Camilla Stenfelt, fertility doctor and head of operations at Livio Stockholm, told TT that what is needed is both a Swedish and an international donor register to monitor and limit the number of families created from each donor. Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare has already been tasked by the government with establishing a national gamete-donor register.
This links directly to a debate already taking place at European level.
In our earlier article, Europe moves towards setting a new standard for sperm and egg donation, we examined new recommendations from ESHRE and the Council of Europe concerning donor limits, registries, traceability, counselling and cross-border gamete donation. Those recommendations are designed to address a genuine problem. A sperm donor may donate in one country, their sperm may be distributed through a bank in another country and recipient families may undergo treatment across several other jurisdictions. National limits alone therefore do not necessarily reveal the total international number of families created from one donor.
And this is where donor shortage and donor regulation are beginning to collide.
Europe: fewer families per donor?
ESHRE’s 2026 position paper proposes an EU-wide approach to limiting the international use of individual sperm and egg donors. ESHRE recommends that limits should be calculated according to families rather than individual children, so that parents can still have genetically related siblings using the same donor.
It proposes a phased approach beginning with an EU-wide maximum of 50 families per donor, followed by gradual reductions. Its longer-term objective is much lower: an international maximum of 15 families or fewer per gamete donor. Stricter existing national limits would continue to apply. So, for example, ESHRE records Sweden’s current limit as children in six families, Denmark’s as children in 12 families and the UK’s 10 families. The significance of the ESHRE proposal is not necessarily the exact number of 15. It is the principle that a donor’s use should eventually be monitored internationally rather than independently country by country.
How does the new EU SoHO Regulation fit into this? This is where the EU’s new Substances of Human Origin Regulation (the SoHO Regulation) becomes particularly important. The Regulation was adopted in 2024 and will generally apply from 7 August 2027. It covers substances of human origin including reproductive cells and introduces stronger protections for donors, recipients and children born through medically assisted reproduction, as well as measures to improve harmonisation and cross-border oversight.
It is important to distinguish between what is already law and what is being proposed. The SoHO Regulation does not currently establish an EU-wide 15- or 50-family donor limit. ESHRE is proposing that an EU-wide donor limit could potentially be added under the SoHO framework, including through the European Commission’s delegated powers under Article 58(16). The Regulation already contains provisions relating to the enforcement of national donor-offspring limits.
So, an EU-wide limit is not yet law. But the regulatory architecture through which greater European coordination might develop is increasingly taking shape. ESHRE also recommends establishing an EU-wide donor registry covering donations within Europe and gametes imported from outside the EU. If that proves impossible, it argues that national registries should at least be capable of monitoring a donor’s use regardless of where the gametes ultimately travel. That direction closely echoes what fertility professionals are now calling for in Sweden.
The Council of Europe is moving in a similar direction
As we discussed in our previous article, the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers adopted Recommendation CM/Rec(2026)10 in June 2026, calling for harmonised measures for the protection of third-party gamete donors. The Council of Europe and ESHRE take somewhat different approaches notably, the Council of Europe recommendation does not prescribe ESHRE’s specific 50- and 15-family figures but the overall direction is similar: greater traceability, better donor information, better cross-border coordination and more effective oversight of donor conception. These are important protections. But their impact on donor availability also needs to be considered.
ESHRE itself warns that supply could become a problem
This is perhaps the most important part of the ESHRE position paper for the current debate. ESHRE explicitly recognises that tighter international limits will mean fewer families can be created from each donor. Unless donor recruitment increases “quickly and substantially”, ESHRE expects patients may have to wait longer for donor gametes or, in some cases, may not be able to access them at all. It also anticipates that treatment costs could rise because the significant costs associated with recruiting and screening each donor would be spread across fewer recipient families.
ESHRE therefore specifically calls for efforts to increase the donor pool, including donor recruitment strategies, communication campaigns, educational programmes and greater public and non-profit involvement. This point deserves more attention as the debate should not be framed as: donor-conceived people’s interests versus intended parents’ access to treatment.
Both matter. Hence the better question is: How can we introduce responsible donor limits while recruiting enough additional donors to maintain access to treatment? The situation in Australia and Sweden suggest this is not a theoretical problem.
Canada: could changing eligibility rules support increasing the donor pool?
Canada offers an interesting contrast. Rather than further restricting who can donate, Health Canada has announced changes intended to remove screening barriers affecting some gay and bisexual men. Beginning in autumn 2026, Health Canada is expected to remove questions concerning recent anal sex with new or multiple partners from sperm-donor screening. The change follows a legal challenge to the criteria.
The current technical directive still includes sexual-behaviour screening relating to anal sex and multiple partners, demonstrating the criterion that is being changed. Importantly, removing that question does not mean abandoning infectious-disease safeguards. Canada’s donor suitability framework requires testing for infections including HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, syphilis, HTLV for sperm donors and other relevant infections.
Canada therefore introduces another dimension to the debate: If Europe needs significantly more donors, should policymakers also be reviewing whether every existing donor exclusion remains scientifically justified? Protecting safety does not necessarily mean preserving every historical eligibility criterion indefinitely. As scientific testing improves, donor-screening policy can evolve too.
England: donor availability means little if patients cannot afford treatment
Supply is only one form of fertility access. England illustrates another as an investigation by The Independent found substantial regional inequalities in NHS-funded IVF, with five Integrated Care Boards having reduced provision or eligibility in the preceding year. Despite NICE guidance recommending three full IVF cycles for eligible people under 40, only two of England’s 42 ICBs were reported to be providing the recommended three full cycles, while only 11 offered what NICE defines as full cycles.
The barriers can be particularly relevant for people requiring donor sperm, as the investigation also found that in many areas same-sex female couples have historically been required to complete multiple self-funded insemination attempts before becoming eligible for NHS treatment, potentially creating costs of thousands of pounds when treatment and donor sperm are combined.
So even if additional donors can be recruited, another challenge remains: Can intended parents actually access the treatment in which those donations are used? We may be moving from a donor shortage to a donor-capacity problem. Evaluated together, these developments tell a much bigger story.
Australia: demand is growing faster than domestic donor availability.
Sweden: clinics are reporting shortages and a major public hospital is already sourcing donor sperm internationally.
Europe: ESHRE is recommending fewer families per donor and stronger international tracking.
Canada: donor eligibility rules are being reconsidered as screening science and social expectations evolve.
England: access to fertility treatment remains highly dependent on geography and ability to pay.
These are different problems, but they converge around one issue: Donor capacity.
If demand increases while each donor is permitted to help fewer families, the system requires more individual donors. If those donors cannot be recruited domestically, cross-border donor supply becomes more important. And as donor sperm and eggs move across borders, international traceability and registries become more important too. It is a circle that fertility policy now needs to solve.
Fewer families per donor. More donors overall.
There are good reasons for avoiding exceptionally large international donor-sibling groups. Donor-conceived people should have confidence that systems exist to monitor how widely a donor is used. Donors should understand where their gametes may be distributed, and families should have reliable information, while serious medical or genetic information needs to be traceable across borders.
The solution should therefore not be to abandon donor limits. But limits cannot be designed in isolation from donor supply. That is precisely why ESHRE couples its recommendation for tighter international limits with a call for substantially stronger donor recruitment.
Our previous article explored how Europe is moving towards a more coordinated, transparent model for sperm and egg donation. The new evidence from Australia and Sweden shows why the next part of that conversation is equally important: How do we build a donor pool large enough to make that model work?
Because the direction of travel increasingly appears to be: fewer families per donor, better international oversight, greater traceability, but therefore a need for significantly more donors.
At SpermAndEggDonors.com, we believe this is also why understanding the international donor landscape will become increasingly important for intended parents and fertility professionals. Cross-border donation is no longer an exception to modern fertility treatment. In some healthcare systems, it is already part of the solution to domestic donor shortages.
The challenge for the coming years will be ensuring that international donor conception can provide access without compromising the protections owed to donors, intended parents and donor-conceived people.
This article discusses developing fertility policy and regulation. National rules on gamete donation, importation, donor limits and treatment eligibility vary and are subject to change. Patients and professionals should confirm the current requirements applying in the relevant jurisdiction.
Some referenced sources:
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/parenting/demand-for-sperm-in-australia-nearly-doubles-amid-donor-shortage/news-story/6856301667ec632982914e96a79cdb8f
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/article/health-canada-ending-discriminatory-sperm-donation-rules-after-court-challenge/
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/ivf-nhs-england-fertility-treatment-uk-birth-rate-b3020992.html
https://www.hallandsposten.se/nyheter/sverige/stor-brist-pa-spermadonatorer.7fb91900-2aba-5c26-863f-76018501c936