Almost 80,000 people moved to Denmark last year, with 57 percent moving for work or studies. Where did they come from?
How many people moved to Denmark last year?
Not including Nordic citizens – ie citizens of Norway, Sweden, Iceland or Finland – a total of 78,901 people moved to Denmark in 2025, according to figures from Statistics Denmark.
Of those, around 45,000 came for work or studies, a total of 57 percent.
What were the most common countries of origin?
Looking at the total, by far the most common country of origin was Ukraine, with 12,718 Ukrainians coming to Denmark last year.
The next most common group was Romanians, with 5,626 arriving in Denmark in 2025, followed by 5,126 Germans, 4,802 Americans and 3,879 Italians.
Rounding out the top ten were Poland (3,136), Nepal (3,073), India (2,784), Bangladesh (2,300) and Spain (2,299).
Hover over a country on the map below to see how many of its citizens came to Denmark last year (countries in gray had no citizens move to Denmark or, in the case of the Nordic countries, were not included in the statistics).
What were the most common reasons for coming to Denmark?
The largest group of people coming to Denmark were workers, with a combined 24,230 EU and non-EU people coming to Denmark to work in 2025. Most of them – 15,134 – were EU citizens (the largest single group).
A combined 18,500 people came to study a specific course – 10,450 non-EU citizens and 8,050 from the EU. Adding internships (2,225), au pairs (427) and ‘other students’ (6,989) brings this total to 28,141.
The next largest single group was Ukrainians under the Temporary Protection Directive, with 12,633 coming to Denmark last year. Another large individual group was EU/EES citizens with a reason other than study or work (10,080).
A total of 701 asylum seekers came to Denmark last year, as well as 685 family members of asylum seekers. Just 469 people came as family members of other foreign citizens, much lower than the 1,145 people who came to join a Danish or Nordic citizen.
A total of 816 people came under the “other” category.
In total, 24,230 people came for work, 28,141 for study and 11,474 as family members.
Of those arriving to study, 3,777 were Americans, which was by far the largest group (this has been the case for the past three years).
The next largest group was Germans, then Nepalese citizens, people from Bangladesh, Italy, China, Spain, Pakistan, Australia and India, in that order.
One in five workers coming to Denmark came from Romania (21 percent of the total). Polish citizens were the next-largest group (10 percent), followed by Italians (8 percent).
The rest of the top ten was made up of Indians, Germans, Lithuanians, Spaniards, Bulgarians, French people and Chinese people.
