At least 309,852 people obtained a German passport in 2025, beating the 291,955 naturalizations the previous year, the weekly Welt am Sonntag has reported.

Germany has seen a rise in the number of people seeking German citizenship since it made it possible in mid-2024 for people to have passports from multiple countries and reduced the required time of residence to five years from eight.

What did the report say about German citizenship numbers?

The statistics come from 14 of Germany's 16 federal states, with data still lacking from the eastern states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saxony-Anhalt, according to Welt am Sonntag.

The western states of Lower Saxony, Saarland and Schleswig-Holstein had also not provided complete data, it said, although almost all cities and districts in these states had done so.

In some cases, the numbers are based on preliminary data, the paper said.

Expected boom in numbers of Ukrainians seeking citizenship

Several municipalities reported that naturalization numbers were currently going down, but some said they were preparing for a new rise next year when the many Ukrainians who fled to Germany amid the war in their country reach the required residency duration.

A spokesman for the northern Aurich region told the paper that as the first big wave of Ukrainian refugees came in early 2022, many will have been in the country for five years by spring 2027.

As the collective protection status for Ukrainian refugees expires in March 2027, he said, "many will probably use the reduced five-year requirement to gain citizenship" so that their legal status is secured. 

He said that Ukrainian refugees, in contrast with the many asylum seekers, mostly refugees from the Syrian civil war, who came to Germany in 2015/2016, had profited "from considerable structural advantages."

These included the permission to immediately find employment and receive full residency status.

Biggest rise in naturalizations in 2024

The number of German passports issued in 2024 represented a rise of 46% compared with the year before. 

The year-on-year increase in 2025 was just 6%, according to the figures from the newspaper.

In 2024, 28% of those who received German citizenship came from Syria, followed by people from Turkey.  

Edited by: Wesley Dockery

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