Globally, the largest population is found east of the Ural mountain range, in the large Siberian forests; brown bears are also present in smaller numbers in parts of central Asia.

The largest brown bear population in Europe is in Russia, where it has now recovered from an all-time low caused by intensive hunting. Populations in Baltoscandia are similarly, albeit slowly, increasing. They include almost 3,000 bears in Sweden, 2,000 in Finland, 1,100 in Estonia[26] and around 100 in Norway.

Large populations can also be found in Romania (around 6,000), Slovakia (around 2,500), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia (1,200), Slovenia (1,100),[27] North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Poland, Turkey (around 4,000),[28] and Georgia.

Small but still significant populations can also be found in Albania, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro.[29] In 2005, there were an estimated 200 in Ukraine; these populations are part of two distinct metapopulations: the Carpathian with over 5000 individuals, and the Dinaric-Pindos (Balkans) with around 3000 individuals.[30]

There is a small but growing population (at least 70 bears)[31] in the Pyrenees, on the border between Spain and France, which was once on the edge of extinction,[32] as well as two subpopulations in the Cantabrian Mountains in Spain (amounting to around 250 individuals).[33] There are also populations totalling around 100 bears in the Abruzzo, South Tyrol and Trentino regions of Italy.[34] Bears from the aforementioned Italian regions occasionally cross over to bordering Switzerland,[35][36][37] which has not hosted a native population since its last bear was shot and killed in Graubünden in 1904.[38]

Outside Europe and Russia/the CIS, clades of brown bear persist in small, isolated, and for the most part highly threatened populations in Iran,[39] Afghanistan, Pakistan, parts of northwest India and central China, and on the island of Hokkaido in Japan.[40][41]