The data source is: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World Population Prospects: The 2024 Revision. (Medium variant)
Can someone explain how UK is going up until 2060; and then it’s coming down?
Australia will be bigger than Italy and Spain, crazy to think.
Please don’t put the legend on top of the data
Just casual population collapse, no biggie
Spain’s just reached its historical population peak of 49.3m and it’s currently growing fast, mainly due to immigration. If the data point for 2025 is already wrong, i wouldn’t put much trust in the rest of the projection…
Within 25 years the UK is projected to be the most populous country in Europe?
Is this just natives or are immigrants counted as well?
Is the implication that countries with significant migration will see their populations stabilize, while other nations will experience a decline? And is a future population decline necessarily a bad thing? We have probably already surpassed what our planet can sustainably support.
Historically, the answer would have been a firm yes. A declining birth rate leads to an aging population that must be supported by a smaller workforce, often within a shrinking economy—a clear recipe for disaster. But what about the future? AI is causing productivity to skyrocket. Even experts who were deeply skeptical of major AI breakthroughs a decade ago now foresee a significant decrease in the need for human labor in the coming decades.
I would like to see projections made 20 or 25 years ago to see if they were right.
When peace comes, Ukraine will have a baby boom
What about caucasian population ? It Will be even worse.
I see this, but I do not understand why Germany has such a decline compared to UK and France. Do we assume that Germany will face so much less immigration compared to UK and France? That seems not very plausible to me.
These projections have their value, but you just have to look at older projections to see how much the can miss the mark. Showing them without any form of confidence intervalls or such might be beautiful, but I don’t think it’s the most sensible visualisation.
Interestingly, in 2000 UK’s population was projected to be just under 65 million by 2025, quite a difference to the current over 69 million.
[Source](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12152186/)
Ukraine lower than the Netherlands would be insane.
Britain can into number 1! (If britain still exists by then)
I simply don’t believe those population projections, I think they totally fail to take future immigration into account. Immigration into Europe is massive and gets bigger every year.
I think the UK for example will be well over 100m+ by 2100, in recent years net migration (legal) as been close to 1 million people per year and then the channel boat crossings have recently reached a new 50,000+ record and that is just whats been seen / counted. On top of that you have loads more illegal immigration via lorries / ferries / euro tunnel and all of that is totally unrecorded.
The UK is a hard country to get into being a island, so the rest of Europe is even easier to enter.
It would be nice to see what of this is immigration and what is the native population.
Pretty sure almost all growth shown is immigration because birth rates among the native populations are well below replacement rates.
UK entirely relies on immigration. And that relies on us being an attractive prospect with a good economy. Which we likely wont have.
I have no fucking clue why people are desperate to come live in Luton currently though, so maybe the myth of the UK still has legs.
Europe legal (with documments) population projections. Fixed.
Now is, non European population projection
Doesn’t seem like immigration is a problem.
I see one main lesson: make/keep your economy interesting for migrants. If so, you can compensate for lower fertility rates (see UK, France, Netherlands). If not, you have some challenging social uncertainties to solve. Mainly: how to maintain a welfare state with a declining population.
In 2012 the dutch central bureau of statistics predikte the Netherlands woukd have almost 18 million inhabitants in 2040 but the Netherlands have passen this already in 2024 and now we are on the road to more than 20 million in 2040. We will see. All depends on the economy and immigration from the rest of europe.
These are midball projections, Kurzgesagt says lowball projections are more accurate.
We need a better system so people can have kids and enjoy life and not just grind themselves to death
![Europe Population Projections until 2100 according to the United Nations [OC]](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/68lfq273x4jf1-1825x1024.jpeg)
28 comments
This is done using d3.js for my website [populationpyramid.net](http://populationpyramid.net)
You can find a live version here: [https://www.populationpyramid.net/population-projections/belgium+france+germany+italy+netherlands+poland+romania+spain+ukraine+united-kingdom/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/population-projections/belgium+france+germany+italy+netherlands+poland+romania+spain+ukraine+united-kingdom/)
The data source is: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World Population Prospects: The 2024 Revision. (Medium variant)
I’ve seen projections for Belgium at 14M by 2100
[https://www.duurzamedemografie.be/overbevolking/de-bevolkingsexplosie/](https://www.duurzamedemografie.be/overbevolking/de-bevolkingsexplosie/)
Can someone explain how UK is going up until 2060; and then it’s coming down?
Australia will be bigger than Italy and Spain, crazy to think.
Please don’t put the legend on top of the data
Just casual population collapse, no biggie
Spain’s just reached its historical population peak of 49.3m and it’s currently growing fast, mainly due to immigration. If the data point for 2025 is already wrong, i wouldn’t put much trust in the rest of the projection…
Within 25 years the UK is projected to be the most populous country in Europe?
Is this just natives or are immigrants counted as well?
Is the implication that countries with significant migration will see their populations stabilize, while other nations will experience a decline? And is a future population decline necessarily a bad thing? We have probably already surpassed what our planet can sustainably support.
Historically, the answer would have been a firm yes. A declining birth rate leads to an aging population that must be supported by a smaller workforce, often within a shrinking economy—a clear recipe for disaster. But what about the future? AI is causing productivity to skyrocket. Even experts who were deeply skeptical of major AI breakthroughs a decade ago now foresee a significant decrease in the need for human labor in the coming decades.
I would like to see projections made 20 or 25 years ago to see if they were right.
When peace comes, Ukraine will have a baby boom
What about caucasian population ? It Will be even worse.
I see this, but I do not understand why Germany has such a decline compared to UK and France. Do we assume that Germany will face so much less immigration compared to UK and France? That seems not very plausible to me.
These projections have their value, but you just have to look at older projections to see how much the can miss the mark. Showing them without any form of confidence intervalls or such might be beautiful, but I don’t think it’s the most sensible visualisation.
Interestingly, in 2000 UK’s population was projected to be just under 65 million by 2025, quite a difference to the current over 69 million.
[Source](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12152186/)
Ukraine lower than the Netherlands would be insane.
Britain can into number 1! (If britain still exists by then)
I simply don’t believe those population projections, I think they totally fail to take future immigration into account. Immigration into Europe is massive and gets bigger every year.
I think the UK for example will be well over 100m+ by 2100, in recent years net migration (legal) as been close to 1 million people per year and then the channel boat crossings have recently reached a new 50,000+ record and that is just whats been seen / counted. On top of that you have loads more illegal immigration via lorries / ferries / euro tunnel and all of that is totally unrecorded.
The UK is a hard country to get into being a island, so the rest of Europe is even easier to enter.
It would be nice to see what of this is immigration and what is the native population.
Pretty sure almost all growth shown is immigration because birth rates among the native populations are well below replacement rates.
UK entirely relies on immigration. And that relies on us being an attractive prospect with a good economy. Which we likely wont have.
I have no fucking clue why people are desperate to come live in Luton currently though, so maybe the myth of the UK still has legs.
Europe legal (with documments) population projections. Fixed.
Now is, non European population projection
Doesn’t seem like immigration is a problem.
I see one main lesson: make/keep your economy interesting for migrants. If so, you can compensate for lower fertility rates (see UK, France, Netherlands). If not, you have some challenging social uncertainties to solve. Mainly: how to maintain a welfare state with a declining population.
In 2012 the dutch central bureau of statistics predikte the Netherlands woukd have almost 18 million inhabitants in 2040 but the Netherlands have passen this already in 2024 and now we are on the road to more than 20 million in 2040. We will see. All depends on the economy and immigration from the rest of europe.
These are midball projections, Kurzgesagt says lowball projections are more accurate.
We need a better system so people can have kids and enjoy life and not just grind themselves to death
Comments are closed.