In one out of every three homes in Barcelona lives a single person

BarcelonaBarcelona is curbing the sustained population growth it had been experiencing since 2023. The report on population results in the city in 2026 – based on the city's register on January 1 of that year – sets the number of registered residents at 1,729,963. Despite being slightly lower than the number recorded a year earlier (1,732,066 inhabitants), the figure is the second highest in the historical series. This scenario is explained by immigration, which, despite reducing its arrival rate compared to previous years, continues to offset a dire birth rate and an increasing emigration process from Barcelona to other cities in its surroundings.

The report, one of the most detailed offered by the prolific Municipal Data Office (OMD) of the City Council, provides a wealth of other data. For example, it helps to analyze the reality of households in the city. Today, in almost a third of the 648,077 homes in the Catalan capital – the apartments where someone is registered – a single person lives. This proportion has not stopped growing since 2010, when they became the most common type of household in the city, surpassing apartments where two people live.

Behind this phenomenon –which has a direct impact on housing– the report identifies several factors, including the aging of the population and the emergence of new household patterns as a result of "the delay in cohabitation in couples, the increase in separations or divorces, the lengthening of the widowhood life stage or, simply, the preference for living alone". The OMD's radiography goes further and even allows determining the profile of these people who live alone. The majority (70,498) are women over 65 years old, but there are also many women and men between 18 and 65 years old who live alone (61,792 and 61,729, respectively). On the other hand, men over 65 years old who live alone are only 24,203.

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Regarding the distribution of these single-person households, the case of Ciutat Vella stands out, with three neighborhoods –La Barceloneta (43.5%); Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera (41.8%) and El Gòtic (38.5%)– among those with the highest proportion of apartments with a single inhabitant out of the total households. Outside this district, the case of Vila de Gràcia also stands out, where in 38.4% of households only one person lives. All four neighborhoods are well above the city average, which stands at 31.5%. In contrast, the neighborhoods with the fewest registered dwellings with a single person are Torre Baró (22.7%) and Ciutat Meridiana (24%).

New record of centenarians

In contrast with this data, households with minors continue to fall and on January 1, 2026, they only represented 21.4% of households. A figure consistent with another of the realities that this report shows year after year: the low birth rate in the city. Once again, 2025 is once again the year with the fewest births since 1900 – with the exception of 1939 due to the Civil War – with only 11,012 newborns, 1.3% less than in 2024. On the other hand, the figure for centenarians also breaks records, with 1,196 residents in the city who are over a century old – the vast majority women.

All of this means that the average age of Barcelonans rises to 44.6 years. If it doesn't climb higher, it is, again, due to the weight of the population born abroad, younger than those born in the State. Thus, if the average age of Barcelona residents born abroad is 39.5 years, that of those born in the city itself is 41.9, while that of those born in the rest of Catalonia is 50.5. Finally, the average age of those born in the rest of Spain is the highest and stands at 66.2 years.

Fewer arrivals of people

The OMD report also shows a decrease in the arrival of people to the Catalan capital. In total, during 2025, 124,036 new residents arrived in the city, a figure that, despite being the fourth highest of the century, represents a decrease of almost 5,000 people compared to 2024. This flow, however, continues to have a decisive impact on the configuration of Barcelona's citizenry. If between 2000 and 2019 a little more than half of the population was born in the capital, currently this group continues to decline and only represents 44.6% of those registered.

Foreign-born residents, in contrast, already represent 36.2% of Barcelona's population. Of these 626,924 people, 460,409 maintain foreign nationality. Of these, Italian nationality continues to be the main one – driven by the large presence of Argentinians with this nationality –, followed by Colombian, Pakistani, Chinese, Peruvian, and French. Behind them are Barcelonians with nationality from Morocco, Venezuela, Honduras, Russia, Argentina, India, and the Philippines.

The report also detects that the countries that have contributed the most new residents to Barcelona this year are not among the top of the ranking. This is the case of Bangladesh (with 2,095 new registered residents); Nepal (1,644) or Algeria (850). In total, there are 181 different nationalities in the Catalan capital.

The Barcelona diaspora

The report also consolidates other demographic dynamics that have been repeating for years. For example, that of Barcelonians leaving the city, mainly for other municipalities in the surrounding area. The right to stay in the city, constantly defended by the mayor, Jaume Collboni, is still a long way off, according to OMD figures. Last year, 68,979 people left the city, 2.4% more than the previous year. The figures point to a continuous diaspora of families who – according to the same report, in many cases driven by the price of housing – end up packing their bags outside the Catalan capital. This is demonstrated by the fact that more than half of emigrants are between 25 and 44 years old, with the group between 30 and 34 years old being the largest (11,765 people), followed by the 25 to 29 year olds (9,857 people). Furthermore, 6,767 children between 0 and 14 years old also emigrated during 2025.

Regarding the destinations of people leaving Barcelona, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat is the preferred destination municipality, with 7,332 Barcelonians moving there to live during 2025. Behind it are other metropolitan municipalities – Badalona (3,091), Santa Coloma de Gramenet (1,754), Sabadell (1581), Terrassa (1,540), Sant Cugat del Vallès (1,405), Cornellà de Llobregat (1,158), Sant Adrià del Besòs (965), and Esplugues de Llobregat (861) – and also Madrid, which was the destination for 2,498 Barcelonians. 5,478 people emigrated abroad.