Deaths have exceeded births in Germany since 1990. Now a dramatic fall in immigration means the country’s total population shrank in 2025 for the first time in years.
The population in Germany fell by around 100,000 people last year, largely due to a significant decline in immigration – according to figures released on Thursday by Germany’s Federal Statistics Office (Destatis).
The headline figure is clear: net immigration to Germany in 2025 was at least 40 percent lower than in the previous year.
For the whole of 2025, net immigration is estimated at between 220,000 and 260,000 people – down from 430,183 in 2024.
This is the lowest level since the coronavirus pandemic year of 2020, when net immigration was 220,251. For comparison, the average annual migration balance between 1990 and 2024 was significantly higher, at 356,000 persons.
A detailed analysis of the immigration figures has not yet been completed, but the dramatic fall appears to be an acceleration of trends already visible in 2024.
Then, net migration fell from around 663,000 to 430,000 – a drop of about 35 percent.
The reasons given at the time included less immigration from the main countries of origin for asylum seekers, such as Syria, Turkey and Afghanistan, as well as a negative migration balance with the European Union for the first time since 2008.
In other words, more people left Germany for EU countries than arrived in Germany from EU countries.
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The population of Germany shrinks for the first time since 2020
Germany’s population grew every year between 2011 and 2024, with the single exception of 2020 (the initial year of the covid pandemic).
But at the end of 2025, Destatis calculated there were about 83.5 million people living in Germany – or about 100,000 people fewer than in the previous year.
Germany’s population is now shrinking partly because of the fall in immigration and partly because the number of deaths each year has remained relatively constant while the number of births continues to fall.
In fact, the number of births in Germany has been exceeded by the number of deaths every year since German reunification in 1990.
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In 2025, just over one million people died, while between 640,000 and 660,000 babies were born, resulting in a ‘birth deficit’ of 340,000 to 360,000 people.
This deficit has exceeded 300,000 every year since 2022. It averaged around 170,000 each year in the 2010s.
Destatis will publish the final results of its demographic analysis for last year in mid-2026, but the preliminary data already appears to signal a turning point in Germany’s demographic story.
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