In the 1980s, on average 7 800 persons acquired Austrian
citizenship every year. As a consequence of the growing number of foreign
citizens residing in Austria, this number rose sharply in the mid
Overall, the number of naturalisations in 2021 was significantly higher than in previous years, at 16 171, almost entirely due to the introduction of the possibility of naturalising descendants of descendants of victims of the Nazi regime. Since 1 September 2020, these people, most of whom live abroad, have the option of naturalisation without having to give up their previous nationality (Citizenship Law section 58c para. 1a and para. 1b). In 2021, 6 427 persons received Austrian citizenship under this legal title, which corresponded to 39.7% of all naturalisations in that year.
With a total of 16,171 (including 6 448 non-residents),
the number of naturalizations in 2021 was 79.8% higher than in the previous
year (8,996 cases) and 52.5% higher than in 2019 (10,606 cases), i.e.
before the start of the corona pandemic. The number of naturalisations
of persons residing in Austria in 2021 was 9 723, 10.5% higher than in
2020 (8 796 persons), but 7.4% lower than in 2019 (10 500 persons), the
last year before the start of the COVID
A fifth (21.0%) of all 2021 naturalized people were already born in Austria. 8 169 (50.5%) of those naturalised were women, while the proportion of children under the age of 18 was 30.1% (4 870 people).
Persons naturalised under section 58c most often are citizens of Israel (2 612 or 16.2%), the United States (1 630 or 10.1%) and the United Kingdom (1 152 or 7.1%). Among those naturalised for another reason, the most common previous citizenships were Turkey (1 101 or 6.8%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (921 or 5.7%) and Serbia (782 or 4.8%).
Please consult our German website for tables and charts containing further information.