The population of the European Union has increased to 452 million

The European Statistics Office (Eurostat) has published the population data of the countries of the European Union (EU) as of January 1, 2026.

Accordingly, the EU population increased by 706,000 people compared to the previous year and reached 452 million at the beginning of 2026.

This means that the EU population continued to grow for the fifth year in a row in 2021, after falling during the Covid-19 epidemic. The EU population has grown by 8 million people in the last 10 years and by 16 million people in the last 20 years.

The most populous country was Germany

At the beginning of this year, Germany was the most populous country among EU countries with 83.5 million inhabitants, followed by France with 69.1 million, Italy with 58.9 million, Spain with 49.6 million and Poland with 36.3 million.

The data showed that the EU population has declined naturally since 2012 due to more deaths than births, but this loss was offset by net migration. During the mentioned period, the total population in Türkiye was estimated at 86 million 92 thousand 168.