🇩🇪 Migration in Germany: where do people move to and from?
Updated June 2026 · ~4 min read
Germany is the European Union's largest immigration country, and also home to a sizeable diaspora abroad. Here's where Germans emigrate to and where Germany's immigrants come from, using official figures from Destatis and UN DESA.
16.8M
Foreign-born residents in Germany
4.3M
Germans living abroad (diaspora)
Where do Germans move to?
Top destinations by number of Germans living there:
Where do Germany's immigrants come from?
Top countries of origin for immigrants living in Germany:
In 2024, around 21.2 million people in Germany (25.6% of the population) had a migration background, and nearly 16.1 million were first-generation immigrants - roughly one in four residents.Source: Destatis, Mikrozensus 2024 (published 2025)
Ukrainians became one of Germany's largest foreign groups within a few years: from about 155,000 at end-2021 to roughly 1.4 million by end-2025 following Russia's full-scale invasion, second only to Turkish nationals.Source: Destatis, Foreign population register, 2021 and 2025
The United States hosts the largest community of German emigrants - roughly a quarter of all Germans living abroad - while Switzerland and Austria remain the most popular European destinations, helped by shared language and proximity.Source: UN DESA International Migrant Stock 2024; Destatis Europa, 2025
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Sources
Destatis (Statistisches Bundesamt) - Mikrozensus 2024 and foreign-population register (2025; inbound figures are by citizenship). UN DESA International Migrant Stock 2024.
Note: inbound and outbound figures are drawn from different official datasets and measured in different ways (e.g. foreign-born residents vs. citizens registered abroad), so the two directions are not strictly symmetric.