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The number of Europeans is currently on the rise.
As of January 2026, the EU’s population was estimated to have grown by 706,000 inhabitants since last year, reaching a total of 452 million, according to the latest data from Eurostat.
This was the fifth consecutive year of population growth in the EU, following a drop in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The bloc’s population is also 8 million higher than in 2016. This figure doubles if we zoom out to see how it’s changed over the past two decades.
When looking at an even longer period, the combined population of today’s EU member countries grew from 354.5 million people in 1960 to 452 million at the beginning of this year.
Population growth is slowing, though: on average, the population increased by 3 million people per year in the 1960s, but this has fallen to 600,000 people per year in the 2010s.
Eurostat said that, since 2012, the negative natural change in the EU population (more deaths than births) has been compensated by positive net migration.
The population of specific EU countries ranged from 83.5 million in Germany to 600,000 in Malta.
The five most populous countries made up two-thirds of the bloc’s population: Germany (18.5%), France (15.3%), Italy (13%), Spain (11%) and Poland (8%).
Germany recorded a population of 83.5 million at the beginning of the year, followed by France with 69.1 million, Italy with 58.9 million, Spain with 49.6 million and Poland with 36.3 million.
Those with the smallest populations were Malta (588,000), Luxembourg (691,000) and Cyprus (997,000).
However, these small nations saw the highest population growth rate over the past year: Malta increased by 24 per one thousand people, Cyprus by 14 and Luxembourg by 13. They were among the 16 EU countries where the population increased.
On the flip side, Latvia (-8), Estonia (-7), and Hungary (-5) saw the sharpest rates of population decline.
Despite the overall growth of the EU’s population this past year, previous Eurostat statistics estimate that the number of citizens in the bloc will shrink by the year 2100.
The office predicts that the EU’s population will decline by 11.7%, or 53 million people, by the turn of the century, with the main cause being falling birth rates.
Some countries have already taken action to try and reverse the trend: French President Emmanuel Macron has called for “demographic rearmament” after France recorded more deaths than births for the first time since the end of World War II in 2025.
The government has since introduced extra parental leave to try to boost birth rates, allowing parents to share one or two months’ leave more on top of existing entitlements.
Experts worry that a failure to reverse the trend will eventually lead to fewer workers and more retirees across Europe, putting severe pressure on pension and healthcare systems.
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