The claim: 19% of the UK population was born abroad.
- The short answer
- Roughly right now, but not as an exact, current, official figure. ONS's provisional mid-2024 estimate is close to it, but that estimate is an official statistic in development, ONS publishes no percentage of its own, and there is no 2026 count. The figures, and what each one rests on, are on this page.
How to cite this: 19% of the UK population was born abroad.
- Calculated from ONS Long-term international migration (provisional, year ending December 2025) and the ONS mid-2024 UK population estimate. Cited for Foreign-born share of total UK population, mid-2024 (calculated, provisional). Published . https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingdecember2025. Checked by us on .
- ONS, Long-term international migration, provisional: year ending December 2025 (Table 3). Cited for Foreign-born (non-UK born) population of the UK, mid-2024 (provisional). Published . https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingdecember2025. Checked by us on .
- ONS, Population estimates for the UK: mid-2024 (released 26 September 2025). Cited for Total UK population (mid-year estimate). Published . https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/annualmidyearpopulationestimates/mid2024. Checked by us on .
- Migration Observatory (University of Oxford), Migrants in the UK: An Overview. Cited for Foreign-born share of total UK population. Published . https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migrants-in-the-uk-an-overview/. Checked by us on .
- ONS, Long-term international migration, provisional: year ending December 2025 (Table 9), summed by this project. Cited for Foreign-born (non-UK born) population of the UK. Published . https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingdecember2025. Checked by us on .
Via UK Migration Explorer, https://ukmigrationexplorer.org/common-claims/nineteen-per-cent-born-abroad/.
Correction,
This page previously said no official foreign-born figure existed after the 2021/22 Census. In May 2026 ONS published a provisional rolled-forward mid-2024 estimate, so the check is now about precision and recency, not whether any figure exists.
What the data says
The most recent estimate of the foreign-born share is ONS's provisional figure for mid-2024: 13,115,000 people born outside the UK, or 18.9% of the population, nearly one in five. So "roughly 19%" is a fair description of the number itself.
Two things about that figure matter as much as its size. It is an official statistic in development and provisional, which means ONS expects to revise it. And ONS publishes no percentage at all: the 18.9% is calculated by dividing the 13,115,000 estimate by the accredited mid-2024 UK population of 69,281,400. The percentage is ours, not ONS's, and both figures it is taken from are on this page so anyone can repeat the division.
The last census-based figure is older: 16% at the 2021/22 Census, or 10,700,000 people. The mid-2024 estimate rolls that census baseline forward with deaths and migration.
There is no figure for 2025 or 2026. ONS has not produced a June 2025 estimate because the 2025 deaths data it needs are not yet available.
Why the claim needs care, even though the number is about right
The "19%" figure circulates widely, usually as a settled current fact. The problem with it is no longer that it is too high or invented. It is that it is presented as a precise, current, official measurement when it is none of those three.
- It is not precise: a provisional statistic in development carries real uncertainty, and the percentage is a calculation ONS does not itself publish.
- It is not current: it describes mid-2024, not 2026, and the share has probably moved since.
- It is not accredited: and nor is the 16% from the 2021/22 Census, because no UK-wide foreign-born figure is. ONS accredits the England and Wales and Northern Ireland statistics in its census-based UK release and states that the UK ones have "just Official Statistics status, without accreditation".
So "about 19% in mid-2024, on a provisional ONS estimate" is a defensible statement. "19% of the UK population is foreign-born," offered as a settled official fact, claims a precision and an authority the figure does not have.
Why there was a gap, and how ONS filled it
ONS discontinued its annual country-of-birth population series in October 2022, because it relied on the Labour Force Survey, which has had known sample-size and response-rate problems since 2020. For a time there was no later official estimate at all. ONS has since introduced a rolled-forward method, taking the 2021/22 Census as a baseline and updating it with deaths and migration, and used it to produce the mid-2024 estimate published in May 2026.
One caution. A separate ONS ad hoc release, based on the Annual Population Survey, gives a much lower foreign-born total of about 10.6 million against a different population base. It does not reconcile with the mid-2024 population estimate. Do not use it for this figure.
Better questions to ask
- Is this an accredited statistic, an official statistic still in development, or neither?
- What date does it describe? The latest estimate is for mid-2024, not now.
- Does ONS publish the percentage, or is it calculated from two separate figures?
- Does it count people born abroad, or people without British citizenship? They are different groups and different numbers.
Source notes
ONS, Long-term international migration (provisional), year ending December 2025, published 21 May 2026, which carries the mid-2024 non-UK-born estimate. The share is calculated by this project: 13,115,000 divided by the accredited mid-2024 UK population of 69,281,400 (ONS mid-year population estimate) is 18.9%. ONS publishes no such percentage.
The 2021/22 Census baseline (Census 2021 for England, Wales and Northern Ireland; Census 2022 for Scotland) gives the 16% and 10,700,000 figures, neither of which is accredited at UK level.
Foreign-born and foreign-citizen are distinct measures. A person born abroad may hold British citizenship; a person born in the UK may not. Figures for the two are not interchangeable, and the non-British citizenship share is lower than the foreign-born share. Foreign-born population is a stock, not a measure of current immigration.