What is bladder cancer?

Bladder cancer occurs when cells in the lining of the bladder grow and divide in an abnormal, uncontrolled way. There are three main types of bladder cancer. Approximately 90% of bladder cancers are urothelial carcinoma, which begins in urothelial cells of the bladders lining. The less common types are squammous cell carcinoma (develop in the bladder lining) and adenocarcinoma (develops from glandular cells).

You can access further information about bladder cancer, including risk factors, symptoms, diagnosis and treatment from Cancer Council Victoria. You can also call our trusted cancer nurses on 13 11 20 for support and to learn about our range of services for people affected by cancer.

The Victorian Cancer Registry also operates an interactive web portal, Data Explorer, which provides more trends and statistics than published here.

How common is bladder cancer?

In 2024, 808 Victorians were diagnosed with bladder cancer. Of these, there were 607 males and 201 females, representing 75% and 25% of the total Victorian bladder cancer diagnoses, respectively. Currently, bladder cancer is diagnosed at a rate of 14 per 100,000 males and 4.1 per 100,000 females. The median age at diagnosis of bladder cancer is 74 years in males and 75 in females (Figure 1 & 2). Accounting for 2% of all cancers diagnosed and 3.1% of all cancer-related deaths in 2024, bladder cancer was the 12th most commonly diagnosed cancer and the 10th most common cause of cancer-related deaths in Victoria.

Trends in bladder cancer over time

Figure 3a shows for males between 2007 to 2024 the age standardised incidence rate of bladder cancer declined by an average of 1.5% per year.

For females between 1995 to 2024 the age standardised incidence rate of bladder cancer increased by an average of 0.06% per year. However this result wasn’t statistically significant, meaning the change cannot be confidently considered real and may be due to random fluctuations.

Bladder cancer morphology

Figure 4 provides a summary of the different types of cells (morphology) which have caused bladder cancer among all cases. Most bladder cancer tumours, 90%, present as urothelial carcinoma tumours.

Geographical variance in bladder cancer by local government area

Figure 5 demonstrates variation in the estimated risk of being diagnosed with bladder cancer, by local government area, relative to the Victorian average. Red shading indicates areas with higher risk and blue shading indicates areas with lower risk relative to Victoria.

Bladder cancer in people born overseas

Figure 6 shows the standardised incidence ratios (SIRs) of bladder cancer in Australian-born Victorians compared to other major migrant groups, over the five-year period 2019 to 2023. The highest standardised incidence ratio (SIR) for bladder cancer was 1.3 for males born in the Other Europe region and the lowest SIR of 0.46 was observed in males born in the South-East Asia region. The highest standardised incidence ratio (SIR) for bladder cancer was 1.4 for females born in the North America region and lowest SIR of 0.31 was observed in females born in the South-East Asia region.

Bladder cancer five-year relative survival

Figure 7 shows the change in 5-year survival for bladder cancer, and the 5-year survival trend for all cancers over the same time period. It demonstrates that five-year relative survival has decreased for bladder cancer between 1985-1989 and 2020-2024 from 70% to 57%.