Around 30,000 Swiss people emigrate every year, according to the Federal Statistical Office.
Keystone / Urs Flueeler
The number of Swiss people living abroad continues to increase, and many have more than one passport. Nine charts explain their characteristics and geographic distribution.
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In the last decade, roughly 30,000 Swiss have emigrated each year on average. By the end of 2025, 838,600 Swiss nationals – equivalent to nearly 11% of all Swiss nationals worldwide – were living abroad, according to the latest figuresExternal link released by the Federal Statistical Office.
This total represents 64,000 more expatriates than ten years ago, and 340,000 more than in 1993.
Between 2024 and 2025 alone, the diaspora will have grown by around 12,000 people. Their numbers have increased, to varying degrees, in every region of the world.
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Expatriation only partly explains this upward trend. Births of Swiss children abroad and naturalisations are also contributing factors.
Almost two-thirds of Swiss Abroad live in Europe
64% of expatriates live in Europe, and almost half live in one of Switzerland’s neighbouring countries.
With 212,400 expatriates, metropolitan France is home to the largest community, followed by Germany (102,100) and Italy (53,100). Emigration figures for the last five years confirm this top three position: of more than 146,000 departures of Swiss nationals, almost 24,000 (16%) went to France, 13,000 (9%) to Germany and 7,500 (5%) to Italy.
Elsewhere in Europe, other large communities of Swiss nationals reside in the United Kingdom (41,400) and Spain (28,200). Since 2020, Spain has been the fourth most popular country of destination for Swiss emigrants. The Swiss diaspora in Spain will grow by a significant +3% between 2024 and 2025.
The United States, the fifth most popular destination for Swiss nationals, is home to the largest community of Swiss Abroad outside Europe (85,900), followed by Canada (42,000). In total, almost a quarter of the diaspora lives on the American continent.
Argentina is the Latin American country with the most Swiss nationals (15,100), ahead of Brazil and Chile. On the Asian continent, it is Israel (25,000 Swiss Abroad), ahead of Thailand. In Oceania, the Swiss community is concentrated mainly in Australia (26,600, the third-largest diaspora outside Europe) and, on the African continent, in South Africa (7,600).
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More women than men
Over the past decade, slightly more Swiss men than women have emigrated: each year, they account for an average of 52% of emigrants.
However, women make up a slight majority of the diaspora (54%, compared with 46% of men). The fact that people are born Swiss or acquire Swiss nationality abroad probably explains this difference, which can be seen in the number of men and women in the diaspora.
In the Vatican, however, where the papal Swiss Guard is an entirely male military corps, virtually all of the 159 Swiss expatriates are men.
Young adults are most adventurous
The 20-35 age group is the one in which the most Swiss emigrate (one third of the total). A second wave of emigration is seen among senior citizens: 20% of all emigrants are aged 55 to 69.
>>>Many Swiss emigrate when they reach retirement age to escape financial hardship, as this article explains:
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‘With my pension money I can’t live in Switzerland’
Extremes of the age pyramid
The majority of Swiss Abroad (55%) are of working age. Roughly one expatriate in five is less than 18 years old, and almost one in four is 65 or older. Pensioners make up the cohort that has grown the most in recent years (+4% between 2024 and 2025, after having increased in the same proportions in the two previous years)..
Thailand, Portugal, South Africa and Spain are notable for the high proportion of retirees in their large communities of Swiss Abroad. In Thailand, the average age of Swiss expatriates is 55, whereas the global average is 43.
On the other end of the spectrum, Israel has by far the youngest community of Swiss Abroad: nearly half of the Swiss in Israel are minors, and the average age is 27.
Three cantons account for half of emigrants
A glance at the cantons of origin of Swiss emigrants shows the predominance of Zurich, Vaud and Geneva. Taken together, these three urban and globalised cantons accounted for almost half of all Swiss emigration recorded between 2019 and 2023.
This has more to do with their population than anything else. Even allowing for the fact that Zurich and Vaud are among the most populous cantons, they remain over-represented. This is even truer of Geneva: 13% of Swiss nationals who emigrated resided in the small canton, which is home to just 5% of the country’s population.
The majority actually stayed in the ‘Greater Geneva’ area, but on the French side. According to the organisation Genevois sans frontières, the housing crisis in the canton pushes between 2,500 and 3,000 Geneva inhabitants to move to neighbouring France every year. A high number, given that a total of 3,700 people emigrated from the canton of Geneva in 2023.
Bern, on the other hand, is the second most populous canton (13% of Swiss nationals live there), but was the canton of origin for only 8% of emigrants.
Three-quarters of Swiss Abroad have more than one passport
Three-quarters of Swiss expatriates are also citizens of at least one other country. But the prevalence of dual (or multiple) citizenship varies widely among the host countries. Thailand has the highest percentage of Swiss with no other nationality. In contrast, virtually the entire Swiss diaspora in Argentina has more than one passport.
Almost six out of ten Swiss who emigrated are returning
The FSO has studied the migration trajectories of a cohort of people between 2015 and 2024. To date, these are the best statistics available to give an idea of the length of time that Swiss who choose to emigrate stay abroad.
This shows that 57% of Swiss nationals who emigrated from Switzerland in 2015 were living there again in 2024, with a significant variation depending on their place of birth. People born in Switzerland return home more often than those born abroad.
The period of emigration also tends to be shorter for people born in Switzerland: more than a third returned to Switzerland within three years of leaving, compared with less than a quarter of those born abroad, according to figures from 2024.
Is the call of a new life stronger than homesickness?
The fact remains that, every year, more Swiss people take the plunge to live abroad than come to (or return to) settle in Switzerland. The year 2020, marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, was the only exception in the last 30 years. But since then, expatriation numbers have been on the rise again.
In 2024 (the latest year available), almost 30,000 Swiss nationals left Switzerland, and around 22,500 returned.
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Edited by Samuel Jaberg/Adapted from French by K. Bidwell/gw/ac
This article was first published on October 7, 2024. It was updated and adapted on March 31, 2026 with the latest data from the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO) and translated from French using AI/amva
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