Romanian-born people living abroad
million people (UN estimate)
The size of the diaspora: millions of people born in Romania live in another country today. Relative to population, the Romanian diaspora is among the largest in the world, and it grew explosively once EU accession opened the European labour market.
Source: UN DESA — International Migrant Stock 2024
· Dataset: POP/DB/MIG/Stock/Rev.2024, Table 1 (destination and origin)
· Open source
Emigration gathers up every other chapter of this site: people leave for the places where they see better wages, hospitals and schools. And the destinations tell a story of their own: nearly all of them are in Western Europe.
Where Romanians abroad live (2024)
Germany and Italy host the largest communities, followed by the United Kingdom and Spain. Two entries need explaining: Hungary largely reflects the older emigration of Transylvanian Hungarians, and Israel the departures of Romanian Jews over the last century. The UN counts people born in Romania, whatever their citizenship today.
Source and method
Across the period shown: from 0.96 million in 1990 to 4.58 million in 2024.
- Dataset
POP/DB/MIG/Stock/Rev.2024, Table 1 (destination and origin)— Migrants from Romania, worldwide, both sexes- Retrieved on
- 2026-07-10
Download the data:
romani-strainatate.json
· detail/romani-strainatate.json