Data are complete through 2025. 2026 is still partial (only Jan–Feb): in the yearly charts the final, highlighted column is incomplete and does not indicate a real decline in flows.
Scroll to exploreCh. 01 · Frontex
Irregular crossings
Detections of irregular crossings of the EU's external borders, by migratory route. The 2015 peak, 1.8 million detections, remains unmatched: 2025 closed at 180 thousand, the lowest level since 2021.
The series tells three eras: the exceptional 2015–2016, driven by the Syrian war; the long ebb after the March 2016 EU–Turkey statement, down to the pandemic low of 2020; and the 2022–2023 rebound, followed by two years of sharp decline. The total, though, hides the routes: while the Aegean emptied, the Canaries hit their record. Corridors shift faster than the totals suggest — the next chapter shows where.
View the data as a table
| Year | Central Mediterranean | Eastern Mediterranean | Western Balkans | Western African | Western Mediterranean | Eastern borders | Other routes | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | 11,043 | 39,973 | 2,995 | 2,244 | 6,642 | 1,335 | 40,271 | 104,503 |
| 2010 | 4,450 | 55,688 | 2,302 | 196 | 5,003 | 1,052 | 35,300 | 103,991 |
| 2011 | 64,261 | 57,025 | 4,596 | 340 | 8,448 | 1,049 | 5,270 | 140,989 |
| 2012 | 15,151 | 37,224 | 6,336 | 174 | 6,397 | 1,597 | 5,503 | 72,382 |
| 2013 | 45,298 | 24,798 | 19,926 | 283 | 6,838 | 1,316 | 8,880 | 107,339 |
| 2014 | 170,664 | 50,834 | 43,355 | 276 | 7,183 | 1,275 | 9,286 | 282,873 |
| 2015 | 153,946 | 885,386 | 764,033 | 874 | 7,004 | 1,920 | 8,939 | 1,822,102 |
| 2016 | 181,376 | 182,277 | 130,261 | 671 | 9,990 | 1,349 | 5,123 | 511,047 |
| 2017 | 118,962 | 42,319 | 12,179 | 421 | 23,063 | 776 | 6,934 | 204,654 |
| 2018 | 23,485 | 56,560 | 5,844 | 1,323 | 56,245 | 1,029 | 4,550 | 149,036 |
| 2019 | 14,003 | 83,333 | 15,127 | 2,718 | 23,969 | 642 | 1,949 | 141,741 |
| 2020 | 35,673 | 20,280 | 26,918 | 24,087 | 17,370 | 615 | 1,367 | 126,310 |
| 2021 | 67,724 | 22,793 | 61,618 | 22,351 | 18,466 | 8,075 | 1,092 | 202,119 |
| 2022 | 105,561 | 38,690 | 144,118 | 15,463 | 15,134 | 6,332 | 919 | 326,217 |
| 2023 | 158,026 | 61,234 | 99,002 | 39,673 | 16,877 | 5,748 | 697 | 381,257 |
| 2024 | 66,855 | 69,948 | 21,525 | 46,820 | 17,057 | 17,260 | 550 | 240,015 |
| 2025 | 66,551 | 52,502 | 12,526 | 17,862 | 19,195 | 11,044 | 459 | 180,139 |
| 2026* | 3,968 | 4,002 | 765 | 1,274 | 3,062 | 266 | 86 | 13,423 |
Source: Frontex, Detections of illegal border crossings, monthly series January 2009 → February 2026. Total across all routes; the last year is partial (*) and its lighter column is incomplete. The route breakdown is in chapter 2. In the Month view, drag the bar below the chart to zoom into a period.
Ch. 02 · The map
Six corridors, six stories
Every route has its geography and its decade: the Aegean in 2015, the Balkans in 2015 and again in 2022, the Central Mediterranean in 2016 and 2023, the Canaries since 2020. Pick a year, or press play, and watch the flows shift from one corridor to another.
When a corridor closes, flows do not disappear: they move. The Aegean collapses after the 2016 EU–Turkey statement; the Libyan route contracts after the 2017 Italy–Libya memorandum; the Canaries — the Atlantic crossing, the longest and most dangerous — take off from 2020; and from 2021, arrivals organised through Belarus open up the Eastern Borders route. Every line on the map is the echo of a political choice as much as of a geography.
Irregular crossings of the EU's external borders (Frontex): each line starts from the capital of a departure or transit country and ends at the actual EU entry point (Lampedusa, the Aegean, the Evros, the Canaries, the Spanish coasts, the land borders). Thickness is proportional to the route's detections in the selected year. Germany, France and other final destinations do not appear because onward movements happen inside the Schengen area and are not tracked by route. Thumbnails: annual series 2009 → today.
Ch. 03 · Eurostat
Asylum applications
Applications for international protection lodged across the 27 member states. After the 2015–2016 record and the new 2023 high, applications are falling sharply: the figure lags arrivals by a few months, because people apply after entering.
Applications and crossings do not move together, and the comparison surprises: in 2025, first-time applications (670 thousand) ran almost four times the detected crossings. That is no error: many applicants — Venezuelans and Colombians above all — enter Europe legally, by plane and visa-free, and seek protection afterwards. It is also why in 2025 Spain became Europe's top destination, overtaking Germany after a decade in first place.
“First-time”: people applying for asylum for the first time in that country. The closest measure of newly arrived people.
View the data as a table
| Year | First-time | All applications |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 530,975 | 594,730 |
| 2015 | 1,217,180 | 1,283,070 |
| 2016 | 1,167,070 | 1,221,480 |
| 2017 | 620,460 | 677,705 |
| 2018 | 564,900 | 632,885 |
| 2019 | 629,230 | 703,175 |
| 2020 | 415,480 | 476,635 |
| 2021 | 536,270 | 638,755 |
| 2022 | 874,040 | 961,145 |
| 2023 | 1,049,905 | 1,130,865 |
| 2024 | 912,835 | 998,615 |
| 2025 | 670,165 | 798,650 |
| 2026* | 97,645 | 116,430 |
Source: Eurostat, migr_asyappctzm: monthly asylum applicants, EU-27. Monthly series January 2014 → February 2026; the last year is partial (*).
Where they apply · country of arrival, per year
View the data as a table
| Country | First-time 2025 |
|---|---|
| Spain | 141,050 |
| Italy | 126,630 |
| France | 116,480 |
| Germany | 113,235 |
| Greece | 55,375 |
| Belgium | 27,550 |
| Netherlands | 24,115 |
| Ireland | 12,980 |
| Austria | 12,505 |
| Poland | 11,160 |
| Sweden | 4,935 |
| Slovenia | 3,955 |
Where they come from · top six citizenships, shared scale
View the data as a table
| Citizenship | First-time 2025 |
|---|---|
| Venezuela | 89,460 |
| Afghanistan | 63,900 |
| Syria | 40,410 |
| Bangladesh | 35,305 |
| Türkiye | 24,220 |
| Egypt | 22,550 |
| Colombia | 20,850 |
| Morocco | 18,675 |
| Pakistan | 16,680 |
| Iraq | 10,000 |
| Nigeria | 8,305 |
| Tunisia | 7,370 |
Source: Eurostat, first-time applications. Lines and panels stop at the last complete year: the current, still-partial year is excluded. In the citizenship panels the vertical scale is shared, so the shapes compare; the label marks the peak year.
Ch. 04 · Regular migration
Who arrives, who leaves
Irregular migration is a fraction of the total: every year millions of people move legally to and from European countries. And it is not only arrivals: Europeans emigrate too. Ever more young people are leaving Italy, and even Germany loses a hundred and fifty thousand of its own citizens every year.
This is the chapter that puts all the others in proportion: in 2024 EU countries registered nearly 5.5 million regular immigrations — more than twenty times the irregular crossings detected that year — and 3.2 million emigrations. Most European migration comes with a visa, a contract, a university enrolment. And the flow runs both ways: France, Romania, Germany and Italy each lose more than a hundred and forty thousand of their own citizens a year.
Regular flows by country · per year, all citizenships
View the data as a table
| Country | Immigration 2024 | Emigration 2024 | Net 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spain | 1,288,562 | 662,294 | 626,268 |
| Germany | 1,078,504 | 584,230 | 494,274 |
| Italy | 451,583 | 188,903 | 262,680 |
| France | 438,626 | 263,233 | 175,393 |
| Poland | 300,496 | 205,869 | 94,627 |
| Romania | 286,538 | 215,191 | 71,347 |
| Netherlands | 257,714 | 140,087 | 117,627 |
| Belgium | 162,926 | 100,100 | 62,826 |
| Greece | 132,149 | 78,014 | 54,135 |
| Austria | 128,805 | 81,477 | 47,328 |
| Ireland | 127,664 | 58,077 | 69,587 |
| Czechia | 123,910 | 88,379 | 35,531 |
Citizens leaving their own country · emigration of nationals
View the data as a table
| Country | Nat. emigration 2024 |
|---|---|
| France | 183,617 |
| Romania | 182,598 |
| Germany | 151,286 |
| Italy | 141,056 |
| Spain | 137,719 |
| Poland | 125,667 |
| Netherlands | 48,656 |
| Hungary | 41,294 |
| Sweden | 39,550 |
| Greece | 32,141 |
| Belgium | 30,655 |
| Ireland | 28,768 |
Who leaves, by age · emigrating nationals
Source: Eurostat, migr_imm1ctz and migr_emi1ctz: annual international migration, 2008 → 2024. “Nationals” = people holding the reporting country's citizenship. Net = immigration minus emigration. In the Net view, with a single country selected you also see the two components, immigration and emigration, as separate lines. The age breakdown is not available for every country: France, Greece and Portugal do not report it to Eurostat.
Ch. 05 · New citizens
Who becomes European
Nearly a million people a year acquire the citizenship of an EU country: the last mile of integration. Italy leads Europe, with over two hundred thousand new citizens a year, largely young, and every country has its own origins: Moroccans and Albanians in Italy, Syrians in Germany and Sweden.
Citizenship is migration's long tail: those acquiring it today arrived, on average, seven to ten years ago. In 2024, acquisitions across the EU came close to 1.2 million, led by Germany, Spain and Italy. The origins photograph different migration histories — Albanians and Moroccans in Italy, Syrians in Germany: the wave of 2015 becoming, a decade later, a passport. Definitions matter: the glossary explains what it takes, and how long, to become a citizen.
Citizenship acquisitions · per year
View the data as a table
| Country | Acquisitions 2024 |
|---|---|
| Germany | 288,670 |
| Spain | 252,476 |
| Italy | 217,448 |
| France | 103,661 |
| Sweden | 62,989 |
| Belgium | 60,108 |
| Netherlands | 58,999 |
| Ireland | 24,059 |
| Portugal | 20,624 |
| Poland | 16,075 |
| Greece | 14,275 |
| Austria | 13,036 |
By origin · previous citizenship
View the data as a table
| Origin | Acquisitions 2024 |
|---|---|
| Albania | 31,643 |
| Morocco | 27,638 |
| Romania | 14,763 |
| Argentina | 13,559 |
| India | 12,258 |
| Brazil | 11,058 |
| Pakistan | 7,203 |
| Ukraine | 6,280 |
| Tunisia | 5,189 |
| Ecuador | 4,426 |
| Russia | 1,473 |
| Algeria | 877 |
| Türkiye | 787 |
| Syria | 256 |
By age group · at acquisition
Source: Eurostat, migr_acq: citizenship acquisitions, 2008 → 2024. The chosen country's five main previous citizenships; the rest are grouped as “Others”. The full detail is in the table.