According to Kadri Rootalu, head of the Population and Education Statistics Service at Statistics Estonia, the previous period when the number of marriages was this low was between 2009 and 2012. In 2010, for example, only 5,066 marriages were registered.
“The highest number of marriages in recent years came after the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2022, when a record 7,200 marriages were registered. Over the past 25 years, there have been several similar rises and declines, so the number of marriages in 2025 is not particularly unusual in the broader context,” Rootalu said.
Most weddings last year took place in July and August, which together accounted for 30 percent of all marriages. The most popular wedding date in 2025 was August 8.
Most newlyweds were marrying for the first time. The share of remarriages was 22 percent among men and 23 percent among women. The proportion of remarriages has declined in recent years; in 2023, it was close to 30 percent for both men and women, while 25 years ago it stood at 32 percent. The average age at first marriage was 31.8 for men and 29.8 for women.
“That is slightly lower than in previous years. Five years ago, the average age was about half a year higher for both men and women. For comparison, women giving birth for the first time are on average about six months younger than women marrying for the first time, at 29.35 years. At the same time, it should be taken into account that more than half of parents are not married when their child is born — the share of births within marriage was 47.7 percent in 2025,” Rootalu noted.
People most commonly marry in their late 20s and 30s. In both 2015 and 2025, women were most likely to marry between the ages of 25 and 29, although the number of women in that age group getting married fell by around 40 percent over the decade, from 2,090 to 1,252. Men most commonly marry between the ages of 30 and 34 and their number declined by 22.5 percent over the same period, from 1,570 to 1,216.
More young people getting married
An interesting trend in recent years has been the increase in the number of people marrying at a very young age. In 2025, 618 men and 1,079 women married before the age of 25. Ten years earlier, the number of men marrying in that age group was 72 lower, while the number of women was 86 higher, even though the total number of marriages was significantly greater.
“In the media, early marriage has been linked to a desire to qualify for benefits, but family statistics do not contain information on people’s motivations for getting married,” Rootalu added.
Compared with the previous year, the number of people getting married declined the most among those aged 30 to 40. Among older age groups, the decline was smaller and long-term trends show a growing share of older people marrying. In 2005, people aged 45 and over accounted for 13 percent of all men who married; by 2025, that figure had risen to 20 percent. Among women, the share increased from 9 percent to 15 percent.
Of all people registering a divorce whose place of residence was known, 52 percent lived in Harju County. However, Harju County was followed not by Tartu County, Estonia’s second-largest county, but by Ida-Viru County, where 13 percent of those registering a divorce lived.
“The number of divorces in Ida-Viru County has risen significantly over the past couple of years. While in 2022 the number of men and women who divorced in Ida-Viru County remained below 300, by 2025 it was already approaching 400,” Rootalu said.
Among those who divorced, 312 men and 310 women lived in Tartu County. Compared with the previous year, the number of divorces in Tartu County declined among both men and women, though the longer-term trend shows an increase compared with the years before that.
Most divorces between Estonians
As with marriages, most people who divorced were Estonians, Russians and Ukrainians. In 2025, 1,894 Estonian men and 1,897 Estonian women divorced. Of those, 1,621 divorces were between two ethnic Estonians, the highest figure in the past eight years. Among people of Russian nationality, 804 men and 892 women divorced, while among Ukrainians the figures were 117 men and 122 women.
Overall, when examining marriage and divorce statistics, it is important to remember that they do not provide a complete picture of all relationships in Estonia. The total first-marriage rate — which measures the proportion of the population expected to marry for the first time before age 50, assuming marriage patterns remain unchanged during the observation period — was 0.45 for men and 0.52 for women in 2025. This suggests that roughly half of Estonia’s residents will never appear in marriage or divorce statistics.
In addition to people who choose to live alone, the statistics also exclude cohabiting couples, as well as the dissolution of both cohabiting and registered partnerships that are not formally recorded as divorces.
The Statistics Estonia data was published as of June 10, 2026. The figures may be revised if underlying data sources are updated retrospectively.
—
