Germany has set a record for naturalization in 1 year, after last year more than 309,000 people received German citizenship, according to data from the German newspaper “Welt“. When confirmed, this number will officially exceed the country's previous record of nearly 292,000 naturalizations in 2024, DPA notes.
According to the Sunday edition of "Welt" Data were collected from 14 of Germany's 16 federal states, with only Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saxony-Anhalt missing.
Complete data are not available from Lower Saxony, Saarland and Schleswig-Holstein, although most cities and districts in these states have provided naturalization data upon request. Some of the data is preliminary. Several municipalities have told the publication that naturalization applications are currently declining, but officials are already preparing for a new surge in citizenship applications. This is because authorities expect a growing number of Ukrainians who fled Russia's war against Ukraine, which began in 2022, to apply for German citizenship from next year, when many of them will have reached the five-year residency requirement for naturalization, DPA reported, quoted by BTA. Germany reformed its citizenship law in mid-2024, making naturalization easier. Under the changes, people who acquire German citizenship are usually allowed to keep their previous citizenship. The minimum residence requirement was reduced from eight to five years.
The nearly 292,000 naturalizations registered in 2024 marked a record since the start of statistics on this indicator in 2000 and represent a 46% increase compared to the previous year. About 28% of those naturalized in 2024 were of Syrian origin, followed by people from Turkey.
According to data from “Welt“, after collecting all the data, the increase in 2025 will be significantly smaller - about 6%.