3
 Applications

Main citizenships

Applications for international protection in the EU+ have fluctuated substantially over the past decade. Following the exceptionally high levels recorded in 2015 and 2016, applications declined and reached a low point in 2020. They subsequently increased strongly between 2020 and 2023, before falling again in 2024. The decline continued in 2025, when EU+ countries received approximately 827,000 applications, 19% fewer than in 2024. This downward trend continued during the first half of 2026, when EU+ countries received around 332,000 applications, 17% fewer than in the same period of 2025. Excluding the pandemic-affected years of 2020 and 2021, this was the lowest since 2019.

The composition of the inflow also continued to change. Afghans lodged the most applications in the first half of 2026, with around 39,000, despite a mild 7% decrease compared with the first half of 2025. This represents another change in ranking: Venezuelans had lodged more applications than Afghans during the first half of 2025, while Afghan applications subsequently increased sharply during the second half of that year. In the first half of 2026, Venezuelans ranked second with around 33,000 applications, down by almost one third year on year.

Bangladeshis remained the third-largest applicant group, lodging around 20,000 applications. This was 13% more than in the first half of 2025, although still below the level recorded in the first half of 2024. Egyptians and Turks followed, each with around 12,000 applications. Egyptian applications were broadly stable compared with the first half of 2025, whereas Turkish applications declined by 30%, continuing the substantial reduction from the much higher levels recorded in 2023 and 2024. 

Some of the most pronounced increases occurred among citizenships with smaller, but increasingly significant, application trends. During the first half of 2026, Sudanese applications almost doubled year on year to around 11,000, their highest ever Jan-Jun level. Haitian applications rose by 27% to around 8,600, also the highest ever Jan-Jun level. Somali and Malian applications increased more moderately (by 15% and 8%, respectively) to around 9,700 each. Chinese applications also continued to increase, reaching around 5,000 in the first half of 2026, their highest Jan-Jun level on record.

At the same time, several previously prominent citizenships recorded large declines. Syrians lodged around 11,000 applications, 57% fewer than in the first half of 2025 and 85% fewer than in the first half of 2024. This represents the lowest ever Jan-Jun level for Syrians and continues the pronounced decline already highlighted in previous reports. Colombian applications fell by 54% year on year to around 6,200, while Ukrainian applications declined by 47% to around 8,200. Substantial decreases were also recorded for Congolese (DR) and Turkish applicants, both down by around 30%, as well as Peruvians (-29%), Guineans (-24%) and Moroccans (-21%).

Taken together, the 20 main citizenships accounted for around 70% of all applications lodged in the first half of 2026. The overall decline therefore reflects several simultaneous developments rather than a uniform reduction across citizenships. The largest absolute decreases came from Venezuelans and Syrians, followed by Colombians, Ukrainians and Turks. These falls outweighed increases among Sudanese, Bangladeshis, Haitians, Somalis and several other groups, resulting in a smaller and increasingly different EU+ asylum caseload.

Visa-free citizenships — nationals of countries whose citizens can travel to the Schengen area for short stays without a visa — accounted for around 22% of all asylum applications in the first half of 2026, with approximately 75,000 applications. This was somewhat below the 25% share recorded in 2025, although considerably higher than a decade ago, when visa-free nationals represented around 10% of applications. As in recent years, the caseload was concentrated among a small number of citizenships: during the first half of 2026, Venezuelans lodged around 33,000 applications, Ukrainians 8,200, Peruvians 7,600 and Colombians 6,200, together accounting for around three quarters of all applications by visa-free nationals. The importance of this mobility channel has also prompted closer policy attention: the revised EU visa suspension mechanism provides for the temporary suspension of visa exemptions in response to specified migration or security concerns and broadened the grounds on which the mechanism may be triggered.

Repeated applications — those submitted in the same receiving country after a final decision on a previous claim — accounted for 16% of all asylum applications in the first half of 2026, the highest annual or semi-annual share in recent history. This was up from 12% in the first half of 2025 but stable compared to 16% recorded for 2025 as a whole. In absolute terms, around 54,000 repeated applications were lodged between January and June 2026. In contrast, first-time applications fell by around 21%, from approximately 350,000 to 276,000. The rising share of repeated applications therefore partly reflects a changing composition of the EU+ caseload, with applications by people already present in the receiving country becoming more prominent as the number of first-time applicants declines. 

Destinations

Applications in the first half of 2026 remained concentrated in a small number of receiving countries. France received the most applications, around 69,000 or 21% of the EU+ total, followed closely by Italy with 66,000 (20%). Spain and Germany each received around one sixth of all applications, with approximately 55,000 and 54,000, respectively. Together, these four countries accounted for almost 75% of all applications lodged in the EU+. Greece received a further 23,000 (7%), while substantially smaller shares were recorded elsewhere. 

Behind these overall figures, strong citizenship–destination patterns persisted. Almost all Haitian applications were lodged in France (99%), while Spain received 93% of Venezuelan applications and 82% of Malian applications. Italy received 82% of applications by Peruvians, 64% by Bangladeshis, 63% by Egyptians and 62% by Pakistanis. Congolese (DR) applications were similarly concentrated in France (75%), as were, to a lesser extent, Guinean applications (62%). Colombians also remained strongly oriented towards Spain, which received 60% of their applications. These concentrations can be seen in the Overview section.     

Other major citizenships were slightly more dispersed across the EU+. Germany received around half of all Afghan applications (51%) and around half of all Syrian applications (48%), while France received 15% of Afghan applications. Sudanese applications were divided mainly between France (39%) and Greece (34%), while Turkish applications were concentrated primarily in Germany (40%), followed by France (25%). Georgian applications were almost evenly divided between France (32%) and Italy (31%), whereas Somali applications were spread more widely, led by Germany (24%), France (19%) and Ireland (15%). 

Overall, the figures show that EU+ asylum trends continue to reflect a mixture of highly localised citizenship–destination patterns and other caseloads distributed across several receiving countries.

Applications per capita

Evaluating which EU+ countries tend to receive the most applications for asylum is important but to some extent a simple like-for-like comparison is not appropriate because the EU+ countries vary wildly in terms of the size and capacity of their asylum and reception systems. As a rough measure of their overall capacity and a more nuanced estimation of the pressure exerted on national authorities, this analysis takes into account the number of asylum applications lodged per million inhabitants (Eurostat population data).

In the first half of 2026, Greece recorded by far the highest number of applications per capita, with 2,254 applications per million inhabitants, equivalent to around 1 application per 444 inhabitants. It was followed by Cyprus with 1,732 per million. A second group of countries also recorded comparatively high levels, all with around 1,000 applications per million inhabitants: Ireland (1,132), Italy (1,127), Spain (1,104), Switzerland (1,067), Belgium (1,028), France (1,000) and Luxembourg (973). 

Per-capita analysis can also show that countries with very different absolute numbers may in fact receive a similar relative caseload. For example, Italy received around 66,000 applications, compared with 6,000 in Ireland, but the two countries recorded almost identical per-capita levels, at 1,127 and 1,132 applications per million inhabitants, respectively. Similarly, France received around 69,000 applications and Luxembourg 670 yet both recorded close to 1,000 applications per million inhabitants. This illustrates why per-capita analysis is a useful complement to absolute application numbers.

At EU+ level, there were 710 applications per million inhabitants in the first half of 2026, equivalent to around 1 application for every 1,408 inhabitants. This places the EU+ average below the countries with the highest relative caseloads, but above countries such as the Netherlands (658) and Germany (652), and well above Austria (532), Latvia (496) and Slovenia (415).

At the other end of the scale, some countries received relatively few asylum applications per capita. Poland and Slovakia recorded just 87 and 12 applications per million inhabitants, respectively. However, these figures should be considered alongside other forms of protection: at the end of June 2026, both countries hosted very high numbers of temporary protection beneficiaries relative to population, at 26 and 27 per 1,000 inhabitants, respectively. Cyprus stands out as an extreme case, ranking near the top on both measures: it received 1,732 asylum applications per million inhabitants and hosted 27 temporary protection beneficiaries per 1,000 inhabitants. This underlines the importance of considering asylum applications together with other forms of protection when comparing pressures across countries.