There were 107,671 residents with foreign background in Helsinki at the end of 2019, which was 16.5 per cent of the total city population. 81 per cent of them (87,553 persons) were born abroad and 19 per cent (20,118) in Finland.

In 2019 the population with foreign background in Helsinki grew by 4,259 people i.e. 4.0 per cent. The growth rate has slowed down last ten years but persons with foreign background accounted nonetheless for about three fourths of the total population growth.

At the end of 2019, the number of residents with a foreign mother tongue (i.e. other than Finnish, Swedish or Sami) in Helsinki amounted to 106,059, which was equivalent to 16.2 per cent of the city’s total population. The number of foreign nationals living in Helsinki was 63,650, making up 9.7 per cent of the city’s population.

Whilst 12 per cent of Finland’s entire population lived in Helsinki, more than every fourth resident with foreign background lived in the capital city, and half of them lived in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, which is home to around 20 per cent of the whole population. In Vantaa and Espoo the share of residents with foreign background was higher than in Helsinki.

In Finland as a whole, the share of population with foreign background was 7.7 per cent at the end of 2019. In the Helsinki Region excluding Helsinki 14.3 per cent and elsewhere in Finland only 6.4 per cent of the population had a foreign background.

Compared to major cities in other Nordic countries, the share of population with foreign background in Helsinki is relatively low. In Oslo and Stockholm every third resident and in Copenhagen every fourth resident had a foreign background at the end of 2018.