Surprisingly many Norwegians live in Budapest, but we don't know how many Tongans

According to the 2022 census data of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH), almost one in four residents in two Budapest districts, Terézváros and Belváros-Lipótváros, are foreigners, as we wrote recently. The local authorities were not able to tell us from which country these people are from. Since the Statistical Office has not published data on this either, we requested data from the office separately.

According to census data, there were 98,319 foreign citizens living in Budapest in 2022.

The diversity of the capital's diaspora is illustrated by the fact that 13,505 of the foreign citizens living in Budapest, which is 13.8 percent of the total diaspora, are listed as coming from "other Asian/European/African/etc." countries, in addition to the 39 countries specifically named in the statistics.

For example, 259 people from Australia and Oceania live in the Hungarian capital, but how many of them are Australians and how many are Tongans is not clear from the detailed data.

At the time of the 2011 census, Romanian citizens were the most populous group, but this has since fallen by almost two-thirds to 4,874. This phenomenon may be explained by the introduction of Hungarian citizenship for ethnic Hungarians living abroad, with the majority of those who arrived from Romania being ethnic Hungarians who were able to take advantage of the opportunity to acquire citizenship.

Thus, by 2022, the Chinese had become the largest diaspora in the capital, with their numbers doubling in just over a decade to 14,953. The obvious explanation for the quadrupling of the Ukrainian population in Budapest is the war in the neighbouring country: according to the data, there are currently 13,791 Ukrainians living in the capital. The number of people arriving from Romania now is even behind the 4,928 Vietnamese.

Interestingly, while nine out of ten Vietnamese and eight out of ten Chinese choose Pest, a quarter of Ukrainians live in Buda.

The three favourite districts of Ukrainians are Újlipótváros, Újbuda and Józsefváros. The largest number of Chinese live in Kőbánya (2,848), but they also prefer the 13th and 8th districts. Vietnamese people in Budapest mostly reside in Kőbánya, Kispest, and the 15th and 16th districts, while those from Romania prefer Józsefváros, Kőbánya and the 13th district.

Four countries are represented by slightly more than 3,000 immigrants in Budapest: 3,677 from Germany, 3,618 from Russia, 3,310 from Slovakia and 3,106 from France. Germans prefer to live in the inner districts of Pest, i.e. Erzsébetváros, Józsefváros, Terézváros, and they also like the 2nd district.

Russians clearly prefer the 13th district, but they also like apartments in Terézváros and the 2nd district. For some reason, Slovakians prefer the 11th District, but the 13th and the 8th districts also suit many of them well. Proportionately, many French people are concentrated in the 2nd district, but they also like the inner city of Pest.

Italians (2,418) and Indians (2,115) are represented in Budapest with more than 2,000 expats. More than a thousand Poles (1,884), British (1,833), South Koreans (1,810) and Turks (1,764) live in the capital.

The Iranian population of 1,596, the American population of 1,538, the Spanish population of 1,519, and

especially the 1,038-strong Mongolian diaspora and the 1,037-strong Norwegian diaspora may surprise many,

as well as the fact that, despite the government's constant scaremongering about migration since 2015, the Syrian diaspora numbers only 1,163. The last group of more than 1,000 is the Egyptians, with 1,002 of them living in Budapest. Among the African countries, Nigerians are the second biggest group living in the capital with 772, according to the census. What many might not have thought is that there are also 984 Brazilians and 770 Japanese citizens living in Budapest.

The Hungarian National Statistical Office has also sent census data on foreign residents by district. Terézváros has the highest proportion of foreigners at 23.1%, so let's take a closer look there.

There are 900 Ukrainians living in Terézváros, which is 10.2% of the foreigners living in the district and 2.4% of the total population. The Chinese diaspora of 674 people and the French diaspora of 500 people are in the top three – one-sixth of the French diaspora in Budapest live in the 6th district, as well as 36 percent of the Norwegian diaspora, numbering 374 people.

The district is also popular with the Western diaspora, with the highest numbers of Norwegians, Italians (344), Spaniards (279), Britons (238) and Swedes (128) living in Budapest's fourth least populous district. Western European and EU citizens make up 29% of the district's immigrants.

For the 2022 census, a questionnaire had to be filled in by everyone living in Hungary. This included foreigners who had been living in Hungary for at least 3 months. Those who had lived abroad for less than 12 months but had an address in Hungary also had to fill in the questionnaire. Presumably, there were also foreign citizens among this group.

According to the 2022 census data of the Hungarian National Statistical Office, there are 98,319 foreign citizens living in Budapest. This means that 5.8% of the 1,685,342 inhabitants of Budapest are foreigners. It is interesting to note that, despite the freedom of permanent residence within the EU

almost 70 per cent of the 100,000 foreigners came from outside the EU.

The share of foreigners is much lower nationwide: of Hungary's 9,603,634 inhabitants, 218,061 are foreigners, which equals to just 2.2%. This also means that almost half of the foreigners living in the country live in Budapest.