Sovereign Financial Distress, conceptualised in this study as a financial manifestation of sovereign risk involving pressures on a government’s capacity to meet its financial obligations, service its debt, and avoid default, has attracted sustained scholarly attention because of its implications for financial stability, borrowing costs, investment, and economic resilience. This study maps the intellectual and thematic development of the broader sovereign risk literature on sovereign financial distress through a bibliometric analysis of 2030 English-language, peer-reviewed journal articles indexed in Scopus and published between 1974 and 2026. […]