Which European capital cities had the largest increases in Muslim share between 2015 and 2025?
Executive summary
Available evidence does not support a definitive, city-by-city ranking of European capitals by change in Muslim population share from 2015 to 2025, but several capitals show repeatedly cited, measurable upticks or high shares—most notably Vienna, Brussels, Paris and Amsterdam—while country-level projections from Pew point to broader growth patterns that make such capital increases plausible [1] [2] [3]. Reporting and third‑party compilations offer fragments—school‑enrolment snapshots, city studies and national projections—but no single, transparent dataset across all capitals for 2015 and 2025 exists in the supplied sources, so conclusions must be cautious [4] [3] [5].
1. The basic finding: several Western European capitals show the largest apparent increases
Multiple sources and city studies point to notably larger Muslim shares in Western European capitals that received substantial migration and whose Muslim populations are younger than the general population, making relative shares rise between 2015 and the mid‑2020s; Brussels and Amsterdam are commonly cited as experiencing the biggest local shifts, with Vienna and Paris also repeatedly singled out in city‑level reporting [3] [6] [2].
2. What can be measured reliably from the supplied reporting
Country‑level demographic projections from Pew provide the strongest baseline: Muslims in Europe are younger and have had higher fertility and migration-driven growth than non‑Muslims, which implies rising shares in many urban centres even if city data are patchy [2] [1]. Open Society’s comparative work highlights 11 EU cities and documents diverging local experiences, signaling where capital increases are concentrated, but it does not present a uniform 2015→2025 city‑by‑city table in the excerpts available here [3].
3. City snapshots corroborated by verification reporting
At the city level, verification journalism strengthens some claims while undermining others: Vienna has a confirmed 2025 survey point that 41% of state elementary and middle‑school students in the city are Muslim—an indicator of a large, youthful Muslim share and, implicitly, marked growth relative to 2015 school cohorts (Reuters fact‑check) [4]. Paris appears in reporting with an estimated 29% share of schoolchildren identified as Muslim in recent surveys cited by analysts, though France’s data constraints (laïcité) complicate city‑level continuity [4]. Assertions that Brussels leads with extremely high percentages of Muslim students rely on contested or incomplete city statistics and on secondary reporting that Reuters and other verifiers caution about [7] [4]. Amsterdam and several other Dutch and Belgian cities are repeatedly named in lists of cities with large Muslim populations but lack a single harmonized 2015→2025 series here [6] [3].
4. Why a single ranked list is not supportable from these sources
The supplied material mixes projections, country aggregates, selective school‑enrolment snapshots and advocacy reports; some outlets (e.g., DemState, NextBigFuture) republish sensationalized or unvetted figures and should be treated cautiously, while Pew and Open Society offer methodological rigor but do not publish a complete decadal capital ranking in the excerpts provided [7] [8] [2] [3]. Reuters’ fact check illustrates how apparent city “top lists” can rely on different denominators (state schools vs all children) or on extrapolations that cannot be translated into precise decade‑on‑decade percentage point increases without more raw data [4].
5. Political and interpretive context readers should keep in mind
Interpretations of “largest increases” are politically charged: higher youth share in schools reflects past migration waves plus fertility differentials (a point Pew emphasizes), and such demographic signals are often amplified by outlets with editorial agendas—either alarmist or advocacy—so the reader must separate verified city surveys from extrapolations and partisan framings [2] [1] [8]. Open Society’s analysis explicitly frames growing Muslim urban populations as a governance and rights challenge, which is a normative lens distinct from raw demographic projection [3].
6. Bottom line and reporting gaps
The best-supported conclusion from the supplied reporting is that several Western European capitals—Vienna, Brussels, Paris and Amsterdam among them—experienced some of the largest and most visible increases in Muslim population share into the mid‑2020s, with Vienna and Paris offering the clearest verified recent school‑age indicators; however, a precise ranked list of capitals by percent‑point change from 2015 to 2025 cannot be produced from these sources alone because harmonized, comparable city‑level baseline and 2025 figures are not available in the materials provided [4] [3] [2]. Further research would require city statistical offices’ raw population and religion‑proxy datasets or harmonized academic estimates to produce a defensible numerical ranking [3] [5].