Introduction

Brain and central nervous system (CNS) tumors represent a leading cause of cancer‐related morbidity and mortality in children and adolescents globally, causing substantial clinical and socioeconomic consequences [1, 2]. Epidemiological analyses consistently demonstrate that these malignancies are the most common solid tumors in this population and rank among the top causes of childhood cancer deaths [3, 4, 5]. Additionally, a number of recent studies have highlighted the limitations of current therapeutic approaches, indicating the continuing difficulty and heavy burden of treatment for brain tumors [6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. The burden exhibits critical geographic disparities, with mortality rates in low‐resource settings substantially exceeding those in high‐income regions due to systemic inequities in healthcare access, diagnostic delays, and treatment limitations. This survival gap reflects broader health system challenges and contributes to catastrophic financial burdens for vulnerable families, particularly in regions with fragmented referral systems and limited neuro‐oncology capacity [11, 12].

Existing global burden assessments have primarily centered on either aggregate cancer statistics across all ages or broad pediatric cancer categories [13, 14, 15, 16]. Major initiatives such as international cancer registry networks and comprehensive disease burden studies provide invaluable population‐level perspectives on cancer epidemiology. However, parameters in these studies are often not analyzed in detail in pediatric populations or CNS tumors, including longitudinal trends across developmental stages (0–19 years). Furthermore, studies from well‐resourced healthcare systems offer critical benchmarks for survival outcomes; however, their frameworks rarely capture the complex interplay between socioeconomic determinants and clinical outcomes that characterize disparate regions. This may result in noteworthy knowledge gaps regarding the evolving disease burden across critical developmental windows and its intersection with health system disparities.

Using data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2021 study [17], our study aims to provide a systematic assessment of the global burden of CNS tumors for children and adolescents from 1990 to 2036. We analyzed the burden of incidence, mortality, and disability‐adjusted life years (DALYs) across various regions and countries from 1990 to 2021, including age‐standardization for further analysis. In addition, we utilized the Age‐Period‐Cohort (APC) model to analyze the temporal trends in the incidence and mortality rates of CNS tumors over the past 30 years (1992–2021), which provides insights into disease patterns across different age, period, and cohort effects. Finally, the Bayesian APC (BAPC) model was used to forecast future burden of CNS tumors. Overall, this comprehensive and in‐depth exploration elucidates trends in the global and regional distribution of childhood brain tumor burden in incidence, mortality, and epidemiology. This information could facilitate the formulation of health policies and the development of precision treatment strategies.