Net migration for the year ending June 2025 estimated at +204,000, down from +649,000
The latest provisional long-term international migration statistics, released today by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), show a substantial, two-thirds fall in net migration compared with the previous year.
Net migration for the year ending June 2025 was estimated at +204,000, down sharply from +649,000 in the year ending June 2024. Immigration fell from an estimated 1,299,000 to 898,000, with the majority (75%) of arrivals coming from non-EU countries. EU nationals accounted for just 9% of all immigrants.
Emigration in the year ending June 2025 was estimated at 693,000, an increase of 43,000 compared to the previous year. The ONS noted that most people who left the UK were non-EU nationals (286,000), with around half of those being students.
Reacting to the figures, Dr Madeleine Sumption of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford noted: "While net migration has returned to pre-Brexit levels, the composition is now quite different: non-EU net migration is still much larger than it was pre-Brexit, EU much lower, and a higher share of migrants are coming through the asylum system. Net migration has fallen substantially, but this will not necessarily be sustained long term. In particular, negative net migration of EU citizens who arrived before Brexit is currently still subtracting quite a lot from the figures, and this won’t go on forever."
Meanwhile, the Home Office today released the latest quarterly immigration statistics, covering the year ending September 2025. You can access all the materials here.
The Home Office's summary of the figures show:
- Work: 175,000 work visas were granted to main applicants, a 27% drop on last year, mainly because Health and Care visas fell sharply to 17,000 (an 89% drop from their 2023 peak). Skilled Worker visas also declined to 35,000, 46% lower than the previous year. However, the number of people already in the UK extending their stay for work rose by 16% as earlier arrivals moved into extension stages.
- Study: There were 440,000 study visas issued, broadly unchanged year-on-year but still 31% below the 2023 peak. The number of visas for student dependants fell to 20,000, a 57% decrease following new restrictions introduced in 2024.
- Family: 68,000 family visas were issued, 22% fewer than the previous year, driven mostly by a fall in Partner visas. In contrast, Refugee Family Reunion reached a record 21,000 grants, up 11%, reflecting recent increases in asylum grants. There were 61,000 extensions for family reasons, a small (5%) decrease.
- Humanitarian (safe and legal) routes: 171,000 people were granted protection through safe and legal routes, almost double the number in the previous year, largely because of the new Ukraine Permission Extension scheme.
- Asylum: The UK received 110,000 asylum applications in the year ending September 2025, 13% more than the previous year and the highest number ever recorded. Decision-making increased substantially: 134,000 initial decisions were issued, up 31% on the previous year, with a 45% grant rate, slightly below last year's 52%. The backlog of people awaiting an initial decision fell to 62,000 cases (81,000 people), 36% lower than a year earlier and well below the June 2023 peak. Around 112,000 people were receiving asylum support, with just over 36,000 in hotel accommodation.
- Returns: 9,400 enforced returns took place, up 22%, and 5,300 foreign national offenders were returned, a 10% increase.
As the Home Office figures on asylum show, even though the UK received a record number of asylum claims in the year ending June 2025, it still received fewer applications than the other major European countries. In fact, the UK ranked fifth in absolute numbers behind Germany, France, Spain and Italy. When looking at claims relative to population size, the UK sat even lower in 15th place, meaning that many European countries took a higher number of asylum seekers per head than the UK.
The latest Home Office figures on asylum grant rates show a sharp overall tightening, with all ten of the most common nationalities claiming asylum seeing a fall in positive grants compared with the previous year. Some of the steepest drops occurred among groups that previously had very high success rates: for example, the grant rate for Afghan applicants fell dramatically from 84% to 36%, while for Vietnamese applicants it dropped from 47% to 19%.
Other nationalities saw more moderate declines and, in several cases, grant rates remain extremely high. In the year to September 2025, 96% of Sudanese claims and 88% of Eritrean claims were granted. At the same time, some nationalities continued to have consistently low success rates, including Bangladesh (18%), Turkey (19%), and India (1%).
The Migration Observatory's Dr Peter Walsh commented: "While the government has managed to reduce the main asylum backlog significantly, today’s data show just how hard it is to relieve pressure on the asylum system when applications remain high, and the appeals backlog continues to grow."