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The population of the Netherlands is still increasing, but growth is slowing down. New figures highlight that the country is now growing only because of migration, since more people are dying than being born. Even this migration-driven growth is getting smaller.
Key numbers
Provisional figures from CBS show that the Dutch population grew by just over 62,000 people in the first three quarters of 2026 (January to September), reaching 18.19 million by the end of September. This is much lower than the same period last year, when the population grew by about 78,000, and it is the slowest growth for the first nine months of any year since 2020.
This slowdown is not new. Population growth has dropped every year since 2022, when it was unusually high due to many Ukrainian refugees arriving. Since then, the trend has continued to decline.
All growth comes from migration
It is important to note where the growth is coming from. Like last year, more people died than were born in the Netherlands during this period. There were slightly more births than the year before, but deaths also increased, resulting in a natural decrease of nearly 4,000 people. So, all population growth came from migration.
However, migration is adding fewer people than before. In the third quarter, about 100,000 immigrants arrived, slightly fewer than the 103,000 who came in the same period in 2025. Over the first nine months, net migration (arrivals minus departures) added just over 66,000 people.
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Who is coming, and who is not
The CBS data show some notable shifts in where people are coming from. The biggest driver of the fall is fewer immigrants from Syria. CBS attributes this partly to a policy change: Syrians no longer automatically receive an asylum permit, because the security situation in Syria is now judged to be less severe. Numbers were also down from countries such as Iraq, Iran and Somalia.
Migration within the European Union stayed about the same, with around 79,000 EU immigrants in the first nine months, as in the previous year. However, for the first time, more Poles left the Netherlands than moved in, which is a big change for the large Polish community that has grown over the past twenty years. Also, CBS reported that asylum applications in the third quarter were 13 percent lower than a year ago.
Why this matters
These changes in the population are at the heart of many big debates in the Netherlands. Slower, migration-driven growth affects the job market, pension and care funding as the population ages, and housing demand. This follows CBS’s report that the Netherlands is now the EU’s second most densely populated country. The numbers also shape the national debate about immigration, showing that growth is slowing and asylum numbers are dropping, even though migration is still the only source of population growth. As the country considers how and whether it should keep growing, the latest numbers show that, for now, the trend is clearly downward.