About
About the data
This site shows, for every postcode, city, municipality and province in the Netherlands, how many residents have a migration background and which countries they or their parents come from. All figures come from Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and were last updated on 6 August 2026.
Definitions
- Origin
- The country where a person was born or, for people born in the Netherlands, where their parents were born. If both parents were born abroad, the mother’s country of birth counts. If the mother was born in the Netherlands or her country of birth is unknown, the father’s counts.
- Migration background
- Residents with an origin outside the Netherlands: born abroad themselves, or born in the Netherlands with at least one parent born abroad. CBS stopped using the term “migration background” in 2022; this site keeps it because it is widely known.
- Dutch origin
- Born in the Netherlands, with both parents born in the Netherlands.
- First and second generation
- Residents with a migration background who were born abroad (first generation) or in the Netherlands (second generation).
- Origin groups
- Europe (excluding the Netherlands; split into Belgium, Germany, Poland and other Europe) and, outside Europe: Turkey, Morocco, Suriname, Indonesia, the Dutch Caribbean (Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and the Caribbean Netherlands), other Africa, other Asia and other Americas and Oceania. In this classification Turkey belongs to Asia.
The 2022 classification
Until 2023, CBS published postcode figures by migration background (table 83503NED, from 1998). That table has been discontinued. Since 2022, figures are published by origin (table 85640NED). The main differences:
- A person’s own country of birth weighs more. Someone born abroad to two Dutch-born parents used to have a Dutch background and now has an origin outside the Netherlands. Nationally, the share in 2022 is therefore 26.0% instead of 25.2%.
- Turkey moved from Europe to Asia. We adjusted the old figures for Europe and Asia accordingly.
- The Western/non-Western split no longer exists. Those groups are shown up to 2023 only.
In the charts, the line follows the old table up to 2021 and the new table from 2022. The small jump around 2022 is mostly due to the new definition. CBS explains the change in Nieuwe indeling bevolking naar herkomst (Dutch).
Rounding and accuracy
For privacy reasons, CBS randomly rounds all counts per postcode to multiples of 5. For postcodes with few residents, percentages can therefore be off by several points; postcodes and cities with fewer than 500 residents are left out of rankings. Because of rounding, groups don’t always add up exactly to the total. Percentages are always shares of the CBS total, so in small areas they don’t always add up to 100%.
Postcodes, cities and municipalities
The site covers 4,057 four-digit postcodes with residents, 2,483 cities and villages and 342 municipalities (as of 1 January 2026). CBS only publishes figures per postcode; cities, municipalities and provinces are summed from their postcodes. Each postcode belongs to the municipality and the city or village (woonplaats) holding most of its addresses, according to the BAG; a village on both sides of a municipal border counts separately in each, as Ursem and Ursem (Alkmaar). Because postcode areas sometimes cross municipal borders, totals can differ slightly from the official municipal figures (CBS table 85458NED). National figures come straight from CBS.
Sources
- CBS 85640NED (2022–2026)
- CBS 83503NED (1998–2023)
- PDOK CBS Postcode4 (2024)
- PDOK CBS Gebiedsindelingen (2026)
The data is available under a CC BY 4.0 licence: you may reuse it with attribution to CBS. CBS is expected to publish the figures for 1 January 2027 in the third quarter of 2027.