The majority of people who applied for German citizenship last year retained their original nationality, according to a survey by the Mediendienst Integration research group.
It found that the number of newly naturalized citizens with more than one nationality in 2025 ranged from 85% to 98% in cities that collected data.
Those who did not keep their original nationality when applying were either stateless or came from countries that prohibit dual citizenship, such as India, Ethiopia and Eritrea.
There were around 189,000 new naturalization applications in 2025 — a drop of about 10% compared to the previous year, the research group found.
In 2024, the German government changed the citizenship rules to allow people to hold dual citizenship — something that had previously only been possible for a few specific groups, including EU and Swiss citizens.
