Updated September 11, 2026 at 4:40 PM EDT
People who lost loved ones in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks gathered with first responders and others on Friday morning to mark 25 years since terrorists brought unprecedented devastation to the U.S.
Ceremonies in New York City, Virginia and Pennsylvania honored those killed when commercial airliners crashed into the World Trade Center's twin towers, the Pentagon and a field in a rural area outside Pittsburgh, and thousands more who later died of related causes.
Speaking at a remembrance at the Pentagon, President Trump vowed never to forget the staggering losses suffered that day and honored the selfless actions and personal sacrifices the attacks inspired.
But he also used the moment to justify military operations against what he described as the menace of radical Islam.
"Today we renew the sacred oath we first swore in their names a quarter-century ago," Trump told the crowd. "We will never ever forget. That's why we fight today."
Several times, the president evoked the unity and resolve that followed.
"In those harrowing days after the attacks, we saw the authentic spirit of our nation," Trump said. "We were all New Yorkers that day, every one of us, we were all New Yorkers. But we were also all Americans, we were all family, we were all patriots."
Remembering aunts, grandfathers and others lost
In New York, relatives recited the names of those who died, while cellist Yo-Yo Ma and other musicians performed in the background, punctuated by the peals of a ceremonial bell and moments of silence. The Brooklyn Youth Chorus sang the national anthem, with four living ex-presidents — former Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — looking on with their spouses. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg sat next to Vice President Vance.
Historically, the 9/11 memorial ceremony has been an important nonpartisan event, a moment of unity in an increasingly polarized nation. That was visible again on Friday.
People who are fierce political opponents most of the time — like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and current Mayor Zohran Mamdani — sat together, talking quietly.
Families held up large photos of the people they lost. On a dais, speakers recited the names of people killed, along with the milestones their loved ones missed: grandchildren, great-grandchildren, a Knicks championship.
As in the past, there were no speeches by politicians or dignitaries, but some family members voiced opinions.
Terry Strada, whose husband Tom died in the twin towers, ended her recitation with a pointed message accusing Saudi Arabia of supporting the 9/11 terrorists and demanding more transparency from the Trump administration.
"For 25 years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families," Strada said.
Renewed calls for unity emerged at the New York event as well, notably from its final speaker: Michael Massaroli Jr., who lost his father.
"We have seen a medley of people come up today, of all races, all religions, all creeds," Massaroli said. "And this tragedy is just that — it's a tragedy."
"I've had to grow up and spend the past 25 years seeing people use it to hate on our Muslim brothers and sisters, to hate on people who don't look like them, and that's wrong, and that does no honor to the victims here."
He asked for that hatred to stop.
Paul Keating's mother died when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower. Barbara Keating's remains were finally found and identified just last year and are being laid to rest in Massachusetts.
"We carved the headstone 25 years ago but she wasn't there," Paul Keating says. "Now she will be. This feels like some degree, some closure."
Bright morning was overtaken by violence
Historians say at least 2,977 people died in the initial attacks, when terrorists affiliated with al-Qaida, an Islamic extremist group, hijacked four commercial airliners on a blue-sky morning 25 years ago. Two planes were flown into the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan. A third jetliner slammed into its target, the Pentagon. A fourth plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field, after the passengers and crew aboard Flight 93 thwarted its use in an attack.
Tens of thousands more later fell ill, and many died from illnesses linked to toxic debris that spread after the planes crashed.
In Shanksville, Pa., on Friday, the Flight 93 National Memorial's Bells of Remembrance tolled for those lost on Sept. 11, and speakers shared stories of how 40 ordinary people responded when they realized planes like theirs were being used as weapons.
"They did not wake up that morning with the expectation that they would find themselves on the front lines of a war," said Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who attended alongside U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
"No doubt they were scared when the terrorists hijacked the plane," Shapiro said. "But they did not let that fear control them. Instead, with faith in one another, faith in their God, and a deep abiding faith to this country, they organized, they mobilized. And they summoned the courage to stare evil in the face and fight back. Their actions saved countless lives."
The ceremony concluded with a wreath-laying ceremony at the Wall of Names, where the names of passengers and crew members are inscribed on marble panels.
When the 9/11 attacks began, the Rev. Eric Olsen was working in upstate New York. The National Guard unit where Olsen served as chaplain scrambled to deploy and served for months on a security detail around the massive pile of wreckage at ground zero, site of the fallen twin towers in New York City.
"There was all this uncertainty," Olsen recalls. "Are there going to be more attacks? Is this just the forerunner?"
A quarter-century later, a politically and culturally divided United States is commemorating a day of violence, loss and heroism that altered the trajectory of the nation, sending people's lives spiraling in directions they could never have expected.
"I intend to take some time to myself to pray, contemplate and grieve," says Olsen, who served a harrowing tour in Iraq and spent more than a decade of active Guard service counseling military personnel caught up in ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"I did a lot of death notifications for families who lost sons and daughters. It was just a very sad time," he says, now 68 and retired.
A study by Brown University found that an additional 7,000 U.S. service members died in post-9/11 wars, with an exponentially larger death toll for civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
A call to Americans, especially the young, to remember
Ahead of the somber anniversary, the vice president urged young Americans to take a deep look back at the days that followed.
"I encourage every American, particularly people who are young enough to not remember that day, just to tune in for a couple of hours and see what it meant," Vance said during a press conference last week. "I think that sense of commonality and common purpose that we all had on 9/11, that's something we really try every single day to get back to."
That sense of purpose is celebrated in a new exhibition at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City called "In Their Honor: 25 Years of 9/11-Inspired Service." It recognizes people who committed their lives to public service after experiencing the trauma of that day.
"That we can come together with compassion, with courage to serve after suffering an incredible set of losses, on 9/11 and after, is a really powerful message," says museum director Elizabeth Hillman, a historian and U.S. Air Force veteran.
Questioning 9/11's impact on a divided America
Hillman says that like many, she is taking stock, on this milestone anniversary, of how 9/11 reshaped American society. "It changed the [nation's] foreign policy, the shape of the armed forces and the ways we understood what a threat was and what constitutes being safe," she told NPR.
Questions about the impact and legacy of 9/11 remain fraught for many. On Tuesday, New York City officials unveiled a repository for air quality documents linked to 9/11 that had been withheld from the public by past administrations. During a press conference, Jon Stewart, the comedian who has emerged as an activist supporting 9/11 survivors, voiced anger over a disclosure that he described as long overdue.
"They didn't recognize that the air everybody was breathing in downtown Manhattan was toxic until October of 2001," Stewart said. "So to be fair to them, they only buried that information for 25 years."
Former New York Gov. George Pataki, who was in office when the attacks happened, told NPR that he's proud of how New York City recovered from the disaster. But Pataki voiced concern about fault lines in American society that he believes grew after 9/11.
"We are just in so many ways unable to work politically toward finding common ground," Pataki said. "The biggest disappointment to me since Sept. 11 is that polarization. It's the opposite of the sense of unity — that we were all Americans — that we felt on Sept. 12."
Olsen, the former National Guard chaplain, says he also feels alarm about the nation's direction in the decades after the attack.
"I don't like the way it's gone. I love this country, but we're more disjointed and un-unified than we've ever been in my lifetime," Olsen says. "Everybody's afraid of everything. And now we're back in the Middle East bombing again."
NPR's Franco Ordoñez contributed to this report.
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