On 1 January 2024, foreign citizens and stateless people made up 10.9%^* of the people living in Denmark, against 9.6%^* across the EU — the 11th highest share of the 27 EU states that publish it.

In 2024, 101,724 people moved to Denmark and 69,467 left: a difference of 32,257^*, more arrivals than departures.

Citizens and foreigners

Residents of Denmark on 1 January 2024, by the citizenship they hold. Every line is a separate figure Eurostat publishes; the site adds none of them together.

Residents of Denmark by citizenship, 1 January 2024
Citizenship	People	Share of residents
All residents	5,961,249	—
Foreign citizens and stateless peopleOne group Eurostat publishes, shown beside the lines below	649,944	10.9%^*
Citizens of Denmark	5,311,255	89.1%^*
Citizens of other EU countries	268,026	4.5%^*
Citizens of countries outside the EU	373,390	6.3%^*
Stateless people	8,528	0.1%^*
Citizenship not stated	50	<0.01%^*

Against the other EU states

Foreign citizens and stateless people as a share of residents on 1 January 2024, for the states ranked next to Denmark. Only states that publish both figures that year are ranked.

Foreign-citizen share, Denmark and the states ranked next to it, 1 January 2024
Rank	Country	Foreign citizens and stateless people, share of residents
9	Spain	13.4%^*
10	Latvia	12.8%^*
11	Denmark	10.9%^*
12	Portugal	9.8%^*
13	Slovenia	9.6%^*
—	European Union (27, from 2020) (reference, not ranked)	9.6%^*

Largest foreign citizenships

Eurostat's most recent tables hold no breakdown of Denmark's residents by individual citizenship, so no list of the largest groups is shown. The gap is left as a gap: nothing is estimated, and nothing is borrowed from another country or another year.

Country of birth

Residents of Denmark by where they were born, on 1 January 2025. This is a different question from citizenship: someone born abroad may hold Denmark's citizenship, and someone born in Denmark may not.

Residents of Denmark by country of birth, 1 January 2025
Country of birth	People	Share of residents
All residents	5,992,734	—
Born in Denmark	5,129,923	85.6%^*
Born in another country	862,074	14.4%^*
Born in another EU country	278,351	4.6%^*
Born outside the EU	583,723	9.7%^*
Country of birth not stated	737	0.01%^*

Arrivals and departures

People who moved to or left Denmark during each calendar year, as reported to Eurostat. Arrivals and departures are separate published figures; the difference is the site's subtraction of the two for the same year.

Arrivals, departures and their difference, Denmark, 2024 and earlier years
Year	Arrived	Left	Arrived minus left
2024	101,724	69,467	32,257^*
2023	98,344	68,172	30,172^*
2022	121,183	62,927	58,256^*
2021	63,489	44,008	19,481^*
2020	57,230	53,822	3,408^*
2019	61,384	66,520	-5,136^*

By citizenship, 2024

Arrivals and departures by the citizenship of the person moving. Each line is a separate published figure; none is added to another.

Arrivals and departures by citizenship, Denmark, 2024
Citizenship	Arrived	Left
Citizens of Denmark	18,508	16,887
Citizens of other EU countries	35,638	27,540
Citizens of countries outside the EU	47,178	24,981
Stateless people	136	45
Citizenship not stated	264	14

How to read these figures

Citizenship is the legal bond between a person and a state. Country of birth is where a person was born. They are different facts and different tables, and neither records ethnicity, origin or descent.
Residents counted at 1 January are a stock; arrivals and departures are events during a calendar year. A flow is never a change in a stock, and the two are not divided by each other here.
Eurostat takes each country’s own statistics. Countries differ in who counts as an arrival or a resident, so comparisons between countries are approximate.

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Modification notice and disclaimer

The counts on this page are published by Eurostat (Statistical Office of the European Union) and are reproduced unchanged. Humanity Observatory has additionally derived the following from them:

A share of residents, computed by dividing one published count by another from the same table, country and date (for example foreign citizens by all residents).
A country's rank among the EU states for its foreign-citizen share, computed by sorting the published figures of the states that publish both counts for the year.
The difference between published immigration and published emigration for the same country and year (arrivals minus departures). It is a subtraction of two published figures, not a net-migration figure published by Eurostat.
The ten largest individual citizenships, selected by sorting the published figures for the latest year in which most countries are published.

Source: Eurostat. Reuse terms.

^* Calculated by Humanity Observatory from published figures.

Where these numbers come from → Compare the foreign-citizen share across countries →