Foreign-Language Population in Uusimaa Expected to Double by 2045

Helsinki, Finland — A new report says the number of people who speak a foreign language in Finland's Uusimaa region will grow a lot in the coming years. The population is expected to reach about 674,000 by 2045. That is almost two times more than today.

At the end of 2024, about 339,500 people in Uusimaa spoke a language other than Finnish, Swedish, or Sámi as their first language. This is about 19 per cent of the region's population. By 2035, this share is expected to rise to about 25 per cent.

Most of the growth will happen in the largest cities. Helsinki, Espoo, and Vantaa will have the biggest increases. In 2024, about 86 per cent of Uusimaa's foreign-language speakers already lived in these cities.

Here is what the numbers are expected to look like in 2045:

· Helsinki: about 238,000 foreign- language speakers

· Espoo: about 181,000

· Vantaa: about 158,000

Espoo and Vantaa are expected to grow faster than Helsinki. By 2035, the number of foreign-language speakers in Espoo and Vantaa together is expected to be about one third higher than in Helsinki.

The number of working-age foreign-language speakers is expected to almost double by 2045. The number of people of retirement age in this group may increase almost five times. Even so, foreign-language speakers will likely stay younger on average than the rest of Uusimaa's population. People aged 65 and over are expected to make up just over 10 per cent of foreign-language speakers in 2045.

The largest language groups in Uusimaa in 2045 are expected to be people who speak languages from Asia outside the Middle East, from the Middle East and North Africa, and from Russia and other former Soviet countries.

The report says that migration is the biggest unknown. Changes in immigration policy, security, jobs, and the economy in Finland and other countries could change these numbers. Experts from Helsinki, Espoo, and Vantaa made the report together with the Helsinki-Uusimaa Regional Council.