Carinthia records Austria’s sharpest rise in citizenship grants

Citizenship grants rose by 17 percent across Austria in the first half of 2026, with Carinthia recording the country’s largest increase, ORF reported. A total of 418 people received Austrian citizenship in the Austrian state, compared with 217 during the same period last year.

The number of naturalisations in Carinthia therefore rose by 93 percent. The state’s immigration authority described the figure as a statistical outlier, while noting that the year is not yet over.

Statistics Austria reported that 13,700 people were granted Austrian citizenship nationwide during the first six months of the year. Most of the new citizens came from Syria, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Germany. About half were women. Upper Austria was the only state to record a decline.

The overall increase in naturalisations in almost all Austrian states has been linked to the large number of refugees who arrived in 2015 and 2016, particularly from Syria and Afghanistan. After 10 years of residence in Austria, people can apply for citizenship. Many submitted applications last year, while obtaining the required documents and processing applications can take up to a year.

FPÖ Secretary-General Michael Schnedlitz called the figures an “alarming record of political failure”. He expressed particular concern about the applicants’ countries of origin, citing Syrians, Turks and Afghans and attributing the figures to what he called the “irresponsible open-border policy” of 2015.

The NGO SOS Mitmensch interpreted the figures differently. It said the increase did not represent a reversal in the trend for citizenship acquisition, noting that the naturalisation rate was only 1 percent, well below the EU average of 2.6 percent. The naturalisation rate measures the proportion of naturalised people among all foreign nationals living in a country.