Saxony could already have fewer than four million inhabitants next year. This is according to the new forecast on population development from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis). According to several calculation variants, the Free State will only have 3.99 million inhabitants at the end of 2026. At the end of 2024, it was 4.04 million. The "Sächsische Zeitung" and "Leipziger Volkszeitung" had initially reported this.
Long-term decline
In the long term, the statisticians predict a decline of up to a good quarter. By 2070, the last year of the forecast, the population in Saxony will fall to between 2.9 and 3.5 million.
All eastern German states are affected by this development. The population figures there will fall in all variants - by 14 to 30 percent by 2070. In the western German states, the population is expected to remain stable with high immigration, while the city states may continue to grow with high or medium immigration.
