New figures show more foreign students in Austria, but more also use German

Austria’s schools are seeing more students with foreign citizenship and migration backgrounds, even as the share of children who mainly use a language other than German continues to edge down.

The updated figures come from a new fact sheet by the Austrian Integration Fund, based on data from Statistics Austria, education authorities, the Education Ministry and the fund itself. The figures show that, in the 2025 annual average, about 509,800 of Austria’s 1.77 million people under 20 had a migration background. Around 163,600 were born abroad, while approximately 346,200 were born in Austria to parents born abroad.

At the start of 2026, about 203,400 students in Austrian schools had been born abroad. They accounted for roughly 12% of all students, an increase of 2.1 percentage points from 2016. The proportion of schoolchildren who held foreign citizenship also rose. In the 2024/25 school year, Austria had 1.14 million students, 11,526 more than the previous year. The increase came entirely from students with foreign citizenship, whose share reached about 21%. The number of Austrian students declined slightly. In 2006/07, foreign citizens accounted for 9.2% of children in schools.

Against that trend, the share of students with a non-German everyday language fell to 26% in 2024/25, after reaching 27% in 2021/22. The differences among provinces remain wide. Vienna had the highest share, at 49%, followed by Vorarlberg at 25% and Salzburg at 22%. Tyrol and Carinthia recorded the lowest shares, at 17%. Within Vienna, the highest figures appeared in Favoriten, Simmering and Ottakring.