More than 69,000 Israelis left Israel in 2025, as population reached 10.18 million

More than 69,000 Israelis left the country in 2025 under the shadow of Israel’s wars with Gaza and Iran, with the country experiencing a negative migration balance for the second straight year, the Central Bureau of Statistics says in a year-end report.

Despite this, Israel’s total population reached a record 10.178 million residents by the end of the year, about 112,000 more than last year. The population includes 7.771 million Jews and others (a category that includes non-Arab Christians and other people not defined by religion), representing 76.3 percent of the total population, and 2.147 million Arabs, or 21.1% of the populace. An additional 260,000 people, roughly 2.6%, are classified as foreigners.

The CBS says 24,600 new immigrants arrived in 2025, about 8,000 fewer than in 2024. It is a slightly different figure from the 21,900 the Immigration and Absorption Ministry announced on Monday.

Meanwhile, some 19,000 Israelis returned to Israel after extended stays abroad, and 5,500 people arrived for family reunification. That brought the total migration balance to a net loss of about 20,000 people, the CBS says.

In 2024, a whopping 82,700 Israelis left the country, about 50,000 more than moved to Israel. Throughout most of the State of Israel’s history, there have been more Jews moving to Israel than leaving it, with the exception of certain periods in the 1950s and 1980s, demographers have noted. Both of those decades saw economic hardship.

Natural growth remained the primary driver of population increase, with 182,000 births recorded in 2025. Approximately 76% of those births were to Jewish mothers and 24% to Arab mothers. Meanwhile, 50,000 residents died during the year, a slight decrease from the 52,000 deaths recorded in 2024.