Births in Italy fall to 355,772 in 2025, decline continues in 2026
Istat's annual survey confirms a decades-long decline in births that continues into the early months of the new year.
According to Istat’s annual survey, 355,772 babies were born in Italy in 2025, around 14 thousand fewer than in 2024, a decline of 3.8%. The decrease, the institute notes, is set to continue into 2026 as well.
The phenomenon is not recent. The decline in Italy’s birth rate began in the 1970s. After a slight recovery around the turn of the Millennium, births began falling again from 2008 onward, reaching today a figure of around 200 thousand fewer births than two decades ago. This timeframe allows the 2025 figure to be read not as an isolated episode, but as the latest step in a curve that has been falling for almost twenty years without significant interruption.
The first signals relating to 2026 confirm the same direction: in the first seven months of the year, births were down by 2,000 units compared with the same period of 2025, a figure that Istat records as further confirmation of the downward trend already observed in the 2025-2024 comparison.
It should be noted that the data on the first seven months of 2026 is by its nature partial, referring to a portion of the year and not to the complete annual survey that Istat publishes at year’s end: the figure can only be supplemented and confirmed once the full calendar year is closed, as happened with 2025 compared with previous years.
| Period | Births | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 355,772 | -3.8% on 2024 |
| Jan-Jul 2026 | partial data | -2,000 units on 2025 |
The comparison over a span of more than fifteen years — from 2008 to today — remains the most solid benchmark for reading the 2025 figure: not an isolated data point, but the continuation of a trajectory that has brought annual births to around 200 thousand fewer units than two decades ago.
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