Germany's population shrinks by 110,000 in 2025, birth rate hits record low

Germany's population shrank by roughly 110,000 people in 2025, the first calendar-year reduction since 2020, the government's statistics office Destatis said on Tuesday.

At the end of 2025, 83.5 million people resided in the country. The reduction equates to a little more than 0.13%.

Reduced net migration — with 235,000 more people moving to the country than leaving it — was not enough to cancel out the fact that 352,000 more people died than were born in Germany in 2025.

The last time the German population shrank in a year was in 2020, as the height of the travel restrictions amid the COVID pandemic led to a sharp one-off dip in migration.

Germany's birth rate hit the lowest level on record last year and Chancellor Friedrich Merz had promised a tougher line on migration in the 2025 election campaign, so the news did not come as a surprise.

The only states where the population grew were the wholly urban city states of Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg.

The rate of population decline was considerably faster in the former East German states, at 0.5% (57,000 people in total), compared to 0.1% (or 68,000 people) across the states that made up former West Germany. Eastern states are home to fewer people with migrant backgrounds, who also tend to have more children.

The population continued aging as a result. The 60-79 age bracket continued to swell, with 358,000 people joining its ranks as more and more so-called "Babyboomers" approached retirement age.

The primary tax-paying age bracket, from 20 to 59, shrank disproportionately to the national average, falling by 1.0% or 409,000 people.

Hallöle, welcome to our updates on all things German on this fine Tuesday.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz is across the border in France for the G7 summit, along with various world leaders including US President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and French President and host Emmanuel Macron.

Closer to home, the statistics agency reports that the national population dipped for the first time since 2020 last year, as a result of reduced net migration and the perennially low birth rates.

Motorists are enjoying some relief at the pumps, as fuel prices near the levels prior to the US-Israeli attacks on Iran on news of a framework for a peace deal. However, that's also largely thanks to temporary fuel tax cuts introduced when prices were markedly higher.

The last transport of German radioactive waste sent for processing in Sellafield in the UK has docked in the north of the country. Its passage to a storage site is sure to be accompanied by protests, as is customary for such deliveries.

And a new hybrid threat defense center, known in German as GAZ Hybrid, has been inaugurated by Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt in Berlin.

Do please stick around for updates on all this and more throughout the day, not to mention reading and viewing tips from our analyses and background coverage.