Bavaria cuts asylum accommodation as more closures loom

Bavaria has removed nearly 20,000 places in accommodation for asylum seekers, with more than 22,000 additional places scheduled to go by the end of 2027, BR reported. The cuts are intended to reduce pressure on the state budget, while the Bavarian Refugee Council has warned of a new accommodation crisis.

Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann announced the reductions in Munich. They affect all seven administrative districts. Compared with summer 2025, Upper Bavaria has cut around 4,250 places, Lower Bavaria around 1,240, the Upper Palatinate around 2,580, Upper Franconia around 2,820, Middle Franconia around 3,280, Lower Franconia around 2,560 and Swabia about 3,070.

Herrmann said more than 22,000 asylum accommodation places across Bavaria would be eliminated by the end of 2027, particularly the most expensive ones. Places would only be extended or rented where they remained necessary and economically viable, he said.

“The relief is broadly felt and shows that the right migration policy can make a difference,” Herrmann said.

Migration experts, however, attribute the main reason for the fall in asylum applications not to national political decisions in Germany, but to the changed situation in Syria following the fall of the regime of former ruler Bashar al-Assad. The number of initial asylum applications from Syrians across Germany has fallen by almost a factor of 10 since the change of regime.

According to figures from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, four times as many people from Afghanistan now come to Germany seeking asylum as from Syria. Syrians already in Germany are also more frequently having their protection status withdrawn. Syria was Germany’s main country of origin for asylum seekers for years, but is now a distant second.

About 40,000 people applied for asylum in Germany in the first half of 2026. In 2024, before the fall of the Assad regime at the end of that year, the figure was three times as high, with more than 37,000 applicants coming from Syria alone.

The Bavarian Refugee Council criticised what it called the “premature” closure of accommodation. “With this policy, Bavaria’s Interior Ministry is laying the foundation for the next accommodation crisis. As soon as more refugees arrive again, there will once more be complaints about a shortage of accommodation,” said Stephan Dünnwald, a spokesperson for the council.

Dünnwald also said he saw no plans for helping refugees move more quickly from shared accommodation into private housing. The council accused the Interior Ministry of being “very poorly equipped”, despite the potential offered by assistance with moving out.