The Forty-Eight

As of 2025, 48% of Luxembourg's population is foreign. The split is 52% Luxembourgish, 48% everyone else. That number has been the headline for years, but the composition of that 48% is changing quickly.

Traditionally, the largest communities were Portuguese, French, Italian, and Belgian. EU citizens, many of whom came for work and stayed. That is still true, but the picture is diversifying. Jessica Lopes, a research and training officer at CEFIS, the Centre for Intercultural and Social Studies and Training, put it simply: the foreign community is diversifying really fast.

According to the latest figures from the Ministry of Home Affairs, citizens of India, Syria, and China claimed the top three spots for new residence permits issued to third-country nationals in 2025. The Indian community has been growing particularly quickly, driven by changes in Luxembourg's work environment. The migration law has shifted to make it easier for certain professions to move here, and ADEM, the National Employment Agency, publishes an annual list of professions Luxembourg needs. The pattern is clear: the country does not have enough people for the jobs it has, so it is bringing them in.

Geopolitics is also reshaping the demographics. Ukrainians are now the largest third-country community in Luxembourg. That community grew drastically over the last four years, following the war.

The word "foreign" is more complicated than it looks. Consider a Portuguese resident who moved to Luxembourg in the 1970s, never naturalised, and is still counted as foreign nearly fifty years later. Their children and grandchildren are Luxembourgish. They are not. Lopes noted that this pattern, of living in Luxembourg for decades without naturalising, is something seen almost exclusively with EU citizens. For them, there is often no need. Their residency is secure. The language barrier, particularly Luxembourgish, is real, and depending on the sector they work in, it is a language they may never encounter.

For non-Europeans, the calculus is different. They tend to naturalise as soon as they can, because their residency depends on permits that can be revoked if they lose their job or a relationship ends. Citizenship is not a formality for them. It is security.

Dual citizenship further complicates the count. Eighteen percent of Luxembourgish citizens hold a second nationality, and 75% of those second nationalities are EU countries. But STATEC, the national statistics institute, typically records people holding Luxembourgish citizenship as Luxembourgish, regardless of what other passport they carry. So someone with both Luxembourgish and French passports counts as Luxembourgish, not foreign. The 48% does not capture them.

The result is a statistical picture that is precise at the edges and blurry in the middle. The 48% includes a Portuguese man who has been here since the 1970s and an Indian IT worker who arrived last month. It excludes a naturalised French citizen who has been here five years. The number is accurate. The meaning is less so.

What is clear is that Luxembourg's foreign population is no longer just a European story. It is global. The fastest-growing communities are from outside the EU, driven by labour shortages, war, and a migration law that is slowly adapting to the country's needs. The 48% is not what it was ten years ago, and it will not be what it is now in ten more.