Fewer people are arriving, and more of those already here are leaving.

Week 33 · 2026. The half-year migration figures came out this week and they turn the usual story upside down. The pressure on housing and permits is not coming from a wave of new arrivals.

The week

Net immigration falls 12.5 percent in the first half of 2026

Net immigration between January and June came to 29,884, down 12.5 percent year on year. Arrivals fell modestly, by 2,220 people or 2.9 percent, to 74,112. The larger change is on the other side of the ledger.

Source: Le News

Departures rise: 39,251 internationals left permanently

1,608 more people left for good than in the same period last year. That is the number worth sitting with. Switzerland is not only harder to get into, it is proving harder to stay in, and the cost of living is the reason most often given.

Source: Le News

The foreign population now stands at 2.42 million, about 27 percent

At the end of June, 2,424,444 internationals lived permanently in Switzerland. EU and EFTA nationals made up 55,761 of the half-year arrivals against 18,351 from third countries. Work remains the engine: 80.5 percent of EU and EFTA immigration is for employment.

Source: Le News

This week if you're arriving

  • If you are house-hunting, the vacancy rate is still near one percent in the big cities. Fewer arrivals has not yet become more apartments.
  • Coming from outside the EU or EFTA, remember the quota is cantonal as well as national. Ask your employer when the file is actually submitted.
  • If you are considering leaving, do the deregistration properly at your commune. An unclosed file follows you into tax and pension questions for years.

City in focus: Lausanne

  • Built on a hill, which you will discover on day one and feel in your legs for a month.
  • The metro is the only one in Switzerland and it makes the gradient irrelevant, so live near a line rather than near a view.
  • A university and EPFL town, so the rental market moves violently in September and is far calmer in February.
  • French here is welcoming to beginners in a way Geneva sometimes is not. Use it badly and often.

A quiet note

The number that stays with me is the one about leaving. Every one of those 39,251 files was a person who did the hard part, learned the forms, found the flat, made the friends, and then decided it was not worth it. That is not a failure of theirs and it is not a scandal. It is a country that is expensive and slow to warm, and some people run out of runway before it opens up. If you are in the tired part, the part where the admin never ends, know that the arc is real and it is long. Give it a winter more than you think you need to.