Purpose Chronic wounds are a major public health challenge, but little is known about the true burden with studies reporting different estimates due to disparities in study designs and measurement methods. This hampers efficient resource allocation, planning and improvement of wound care Methods Our study aimed to pool prevalence estimates from a global perspective by systematically carrying out searches in MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane, CINAHL, Global Health, and PsycINFO databases for papers reporting the prevalence of chronic wounds in adults, from January 2000 to June 2018. The included publications had to define wound chronicity by duration (≥3 weeks), and/or labelling the wounds as chronic, complex or hard-to-heal. Results Seventeen studies met the inclusion criteria, and 11 studies analysing chronic wounds in the general population were included in random effects meta-analyses to calculate pooled prevalence. Chronic wounds of mixed aetiologies (n=3) showed a pooled prevalence of 2.21 per 1,000 population, and for chronic leg ulcers (n=9) the prevalence was estimated at 1.51 per 1,000 population. Conclusions Our findings, aligned to previous studies reporting point prevalence of chronic wounds identified within the healthcare system, showed that the vast majority of chronic wounds in epidemiological studies are made up by chronic leg ulcers.