On 1 January 2024, foreign citizens and stateless people made up 12.8%^* of the people living in Latvia, against 9.6%^* across the EU — the 10th highest share of the 27 EU states that publish it.

The largest single foreign citizenship among residents is Russia: 31,059 people on 1 January 2025.

In 2024, 14,701 people moved to Latvia and 18,937 left: a difference of -4,236^*, more departures than arrivals.

Citizens and foreigners

Residents of Latvia 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 Latvia by citizenship, 1 January 2024
Citizenship	People	Share of residents
All residents	1,878,575	—
Foreign citizens and stateless peopleOne group Eurostat publishes, shown beside the lines below	241,101	12.8%^*
Citizens of Latvia	1,637,474	87.2%^*
Citizens of other EU countries	4,100	0.2%^*
Citizens of countries outside the EU	236,879	12.6%^*
Stateless people	122	0.01%^*
Citizenship not stated	0	0.00%^*

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 Latvia. Only states that publish both figures that year are ranked.

Foreign-citizen share, Latvia and the states ranked next to it, 1 January 2024
Rank	Country	Foreign citizens and stateless people, share of residents
8	Belgium	13.8%^*
9	Spain	13.4%^*
10	Latvia	12.8%^*
11	Denmark	10.9%^*
12	Portugal	9.8%^*
—	European Union (27, from 2020) (reference, not ranked)	9.6%^*

Largest foreign citizenships

Residents of Latvia by individual citizenship on 1 January 2025, the ten largest of the 197 citizenships Eurostat publishes. This is the citizenship people hold, not where they were born and not their ethnicity.

Ten largest foreign citizenships among residents of Latvia, 1 January 2025
Rank	Citizenship	People	Share of residents
1	Russia	31,059	1.67%^*
2	Ukraine	21,056	1.13%^*
3	Lithuania	2,294	0.12%^*
4	Belarus	1,803	0.10%^*
5	India	1,472	0.08%^*
6	Uzbekistan	717	0.04%^*
7	Estonia	465	0.02%^*
8	Sri Lanka	371	0.02%^*
9	Azerbaijan	302	0.02%^*
10	Viet Nam	274	0.01%^*

Country of birth

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

Residents of Latvia by country of birth, 1 January 2025
Country of birth	People	Share of residents
All residents	1,860,565	—
Born in Latvia	1,644,959	88.4%^*
Born in another country	215,606	11.6%^*
Born in another EU country	21,182	1.1%^*
Born outside the EU	194,424	10.4%^*
Country of birth not stated	0	0.00%^*

Arrivals and departures

People who moved to or left Latvia 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, Latvia, 2024 and earlier years
Year	Arrived	Left	Arrived minus left
2024	14,701	18,937	-4,236^*
2023	15,629	18,752	-3,123^*
2022	38,708	16,680	22,028^*
2021	12,689	12,975	-286^*
2020	8,840	11,990	-3,150^*
2019	11,223	14,583	-3,360^*

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, Latvia, 2024
Citizenship	Arrived	Left
Citizens of Latvia	8,922	9,071
Citizens of other EU countries	337	420
Citizens of countries outside the EU	5,397	9,429
Stateless people	4	8
Citizenship not stated	41	9

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.

Cyprus, covered in full

Cyprus is the one country this site covers in full, down to its districts. Its immigration page is the deepest example of what a country page can hold.

Keep reading

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 →