Germany Demographics: More Than One in Four People Now Have ‘Migration History’



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by Kurt Zindulka 17 Apr 2026

Over one in every four people in Germany, or nearly 22 million, now have an “immigration history”, according to the country’s national statistician.

A report from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) has found that the proportion of people living in Germany with an immigration history rose by 0.5 per cent last year to a record 26.3 per cent.

The category is defined as someone who has either immigrated to Germany since 1950 or who has two parents that came to the country as migrants.

This is significantly stricter than the previously used category of “migration background”, which is defined in Germany as either being an immigrant or having just one parent who immigrated to the country.

According to Destatis, a further 4.2 million people born in Germany had at least one migrant parent last year, or five per cent of the population. This means that, taken together, nearly one-third of the population was either a migrant or had at least one migrant parent in 2025.

In total, around one-fifth of the population directly immigrated to Germany, at 19.8 per cent, or 16.4 million immigrants in 2025. This was an increase of 281,000 people over the previous year, a rise of 1.7 per cent.

While still high, the flow of immigration has slowed over previous years, with 2021 to 2024 averaging an influx of 888,000 migrants per year, an annual increase of 6.2 per cent.

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Regardless, the cumulative impact of Berlin’s mass migration agenda has been stark, with the immigrant population rising by two-thirds over the past two decades alone.

Since 2005, the immigrant history population has risen from 13.0 million to 21.8 million last year, an increase of nearly nine million people. As a percentage of the entire population, it rose from 16 per cent to 26.3 per cent over the same period.

The largest migrant groups in the country were recorded as being from Poland at 1.5 million, Turkey at 1.5 million, Ukraine at 1.3 million, Russia at 1.0 million, and Syria at 1.0 million.

The official statistician reported that people with an immigration history were younger than the native German population, with over one in three (36 per cent) aged 25-34 having an immigration history.

Destatis noted that the average age of people with an immigration history in Germany was 38.2 years old in 2025, compared to 47.6 years for those without an immigration history.

Although recent German governments have sought to pitch their open borders stance as being beneficial, or even necessary, for the economy, this argument has been undermined by the fact that migrants are significantly over-represented among long-term unemployed people in Germany and that nearly half of all state welfare benefits are handed out to foreigners.

There have also been significant cultural ramifications to the agenda of mass migration, which has been tied to numerous recent terror attacks, including in Aschaffenburg, Magdeburg, Mannheim, Munich, and Solingen.

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