Foreigners in the Czech Republic: a Brief Overview
Published: Feb 12, 2025 Reading time: 5 minutes Share: Share an articleOne in ten. That is roughly the ratio of foreigners to Czechs according to the latest Czech census count. According to the Czech Statistical Office, the population of the Czech Republic is approaching 11 million meaning that foreigners make up more than one million people. More than half of them are Ukrainians, but there are also representatives from 185 other countries, from Afghanistan and Albania to Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Foreigner or migrant?
Although the terms "foreigner" and "migrant" are often used interchangeably, they do not mean the same thing. A foreigner is a person who is not a citizen of the Czech Republic. It is a legal term defined by the Aliens Act.
On the other hand, there is no definition of the term migrant in the Czech legal system. According to the most commonly used UN definition, it generally refers to a person who has changed their country of habitual residence for at least one year.
Essentially, these two categories overlap to a large extent. Most foreigners are also migrants. However, there are important exceptions: many foreigners are not migrants because they were born in the Czech Republic but do not have Czech citizenship. Conversely, many migrants - about 5,000 a year - drop out of the statistics on foreigners because they become naturalised, that is, acquire Czech citizenship.
Number of foreigners in the Czech Republic
According to official statistics, 1,094,090 foreigners lived in the Czech Republic at the end of 2024. Compared to the situation in the first year of Czech independence, 1993, this is about 14 times more. It probably comes as no surprise that the fastest increase ever was recorded in 2022, when about half a million citizens of Ukraine -- driven from their homes by the Russian-instigated war -- arrived in the Czech Republic.
The Ukrainian conflict is reflected not only in the total number of foreigners, but also in their national structure. Ukrainians currently make up more than a half of the notional ''foreigner pie chart.'' The second largest slice is held by Slovaks, followed by Vietnamese and then Russians.
As shown in the animated graph below, the four previously mentioned groups have dominated the ranking of foreigners in the Czech republic throughout the post-revolutionary period. It is only at the fifth position that there is an occasional change. In recent years, the long-standing position of Poles has been taken over several times by Germans, and most recently by Romanians -- about 20,000 of them now live legally in the Czech Republic.
Residence status
The foreign community is currently more or less evenly divided into three categories regarding type of residence permit. Most foreigners in the Czech Republic live under temporary protection. This is a status that was activated within the EU in March 2022 in response to the mass arrival of refugees from Ukraine. The purpose of introducing temporary protection was to prevent overcrowding in the member states' asylum systems, where applications are normally dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
The second category of foreigners who reside in the Czech Republic have permanent residence. This permit can be obtained by both EU citizens and nationals of so-called third countries (i.e. non-EU countries). The standard condition for granting this permit is a continuous five-year residence in the Czech Republic.
Finally, the remaining group of foreigners, currently 333,000, mainly consist of EU citizens with a registration certificate and third-country nationals with a long-term visa or long-term residence permit. The Ministry of the Interior includes this diverse group in the category of temporary residence.
Distribution
As illustrated in the figure above, foreigners make up approximately one tenth of the population of the Czech Republic. However, what is not so evident are how there are significant regional differences. These differences are more clearly shown in the map below, showing the numbers of foreigners in different districts at the end of 2023. The clear majority of foreigners, roughly a third of the total, live in Prague. As for the ranking of regions, the capital is followed by the Central Bohemia and South Moravia regions (according to the latest data, the number of registered foreigners in Brno is 66,000).
Not surprisingly, the capital city also dominates the regional rankings by the share of foreigners in the population. Approximately one in four inhabitants of the capital is a foreigner. Relatively large proportions of foreigners (between 11 and 14 percent) can also be found in the Pilsen, Hradec Králové and Central Bohemia regions.
It is worth noting that here again, the aggregate data conceal relatively important nuances, such as the different distribution of individual foreigner groups by nationality. For example, a map showing the distribution of Vietnamese would be significantly darker in the area of the Czech-German border, while the focal point of the distribution of Poles would rather predictably be found in the northern Bohemia belt stretching from Liberec to Náchod.
Where to look for more detailed data?
Are you interested in the demographic specifics of foreigners in the Czech Republic; the number of people who apply for asylum and actually get it; the percentage of foreigners who have jobs in Czechia; the number of the children of foreigners who attend local schools; or how many crimes are committed by foreigners each year? Answers to all these questions and more and can found in the Czech Statistical Office's online annual report Foreigners in the Czech Republic.
