America marks 25 years since 9/11 with ceremonies at three crash sites

Twenty-five years after four hijacked airliners killed 2,977 people, the United States paused on 11 September 2026 at the three places the attacks struck: Lower Manhattan, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

At the National September 11 Memorial, Vice President JD Vance stood with all four living former presidents, including George W. Bush, who was in office on the day. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani attended despite a petition of more than 110,000 signatures from some victims' relatives who asked him to stay away. Family members began reading the names of the dead at 8.30 a.m. Eastern Time. The list covers every person killed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on 11 September 2001, and the six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

The ceremony is built around seven moments of silence. They mark the times the two planes hit the towers, the strike on the Pentagon, the crash of United Flight 93, and the collapse of each tower. Organisers added a further pause this year to recognise first responders who have died of related illness since the attacks.

Why the president is at the Pentagon

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump attended the Pentagon ceremony, hosted with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, which began at 9 a.m. People familiar with the planning told The New York Times that Trump wanted to deliver remarks and that the New York event does not permit speeches. Other administration officials represented the White House in Shanksville so that all three sites had a federal presence.

At the Pentagon, 184 people died: 125 inside the building and 59 passengers and crew on American Airlines Flight 77. The building was repaired within a year. The outdoor memorial of 184 cantilevered benches, each aligned toward the impact point, remains the formal gathering place each 11 September.

Near Shanksville, 40 passengers and crew died after they fought the hijackers of United Flight 93. The plane, believed to have been aimed at the U.S. Capitol or the White House, crashed in a field at 10.03 a.m. The Wall of Names and the boulder that marks the impact site draw fewer visitors than Ground Zero, but the ritual is the same: a reading of names, a bell, and silence.

What the numbers still show

The official death toll from the day itself is 2,977, not counting the 19 hijackers. The victims came from more than 90 countries. Of the 343 New York firefighters killed that morning, most died in the collapses. The FDNY still treats 11 September as its single worst day.

Illness has added a second ledger. The World Trade Center Health Program continues to enrol people exposed to the dust. Last month the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it will spend up to $50 million to build a Youth Research Coordinating Center and a cohort of people who were 21 or younger, or in utero, and living below 14th Street in Manhattan or anywhere in Brooklyn on and after the attacks. The work is due to start on 1 July 2027. About 25,000 children lived or went to school in Lower Manhattan that morning. Few of them were enrolled in the long-running adult studies that now track cancers and respiratory disease among survivors and responders.

An Ipsos poll released for the anniversary found that about half of U.S. adults still name 11 September as one of the most historic events of their lifetime. For adults born after 2001 the day arrives as history, taught in classrooms and seen in photographs, rather than as a memory of a clear Tuesday morning.

The legal case that has not closed

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of planning the plot, and three co-defendants remain at Guantanamo Bay. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schrama ordered on 27 August that their military commission trial begin on 5 June 2028. A plea deal that would have taken the death penalty off the table was rejected by a federal appeals court last summer. The case has now run for more than two decades.

In London, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum used the anniversary to warn that the next strategic shock will not look like the last one. Writing in The Independent, he said agencies must avoid preparing only for yesterday's enemy, and that many of the systems at risk now sit in private hands.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued a message from New Delhi, where he is hosting the BRICS summit, recalling his 2014 visit to the memorial and stating India's position against terrorism in all its forms. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in a statement the day before, called the attacks an assault on humanity itself and noted that 2026 also marks 20 years since member states adopted the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy.

In New York the reading of names will take most of the morning. When it ends, the water in the two pools will still fall into the voids where the towers stood. That is the part of the ritual that does not change with the calendar.