A claim circulating on social media says 49,000 migrants arrived in Latvia in the first eight months of 2026, equal to 2.7% of the population. The Telegram channel “Bez Cenzūras” presented the figure as people who had already come, and cited official statistics from the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs (PMLP). A similar post on X by Normunds Kuplēns of the party “Austošā Saule Latvijai” described the same 2.7% as migrants supposedly “brought in” over those eight months and called for the process to be stopped.
The arithmetic matches the population total. The Central Statistical Bureau (CSP) put Latvia’s population at about 1.845 million at the start of 2026, so 49,000 is about 2.66%, which rounds to 2.7%. What the percentage is applied to is a different question.
In other posts, Kuplēns pointed to approved invitations and calls for citizens of four countries: 11,652 for Uzbekistan, 1,375 for Kazakhstan, 1,043 for Kyrgyzstan and nine for Bosnia and Herzegovina, a total of 14,079. He described these, in brackets, as residence permits and visas. That post has since been deleted from his X page, though a republication dated 24 October remains available. PMLP does publish an interactive 2026 report, updated on 4 September, soon after the first eight months of the year. The report counts approved invitations and calls, not issued visas or residence permits.
An invitation is a step toward applying for a visa. A call is a step toward applying for a residence permit. PMLP records applications for those documents that received a favourable decision. Approval does not mean the foreign national has entered Latvia. A Latvian employer that wants to hire someone who needs a visa first files an invitation; the prospective worker must then obtain a visa with the right to work, and PMLP’s instructions say that visa must be received before entry. The invitation can appear in the statistics before any visa is issued, and the visa may never be granted.
Timing adds another gap. An invitation is valid for six months after approval, so a person invited in August may arrive in October, December or the following year, while the approval is counted in August. The eight-month total therefore does not show how many invited people crossed the border in that same period.
Calls for residence permits can also cover people who already live in Latvia. Permits often have to be issued again, and a repeat application generally needs a new PMLP-approved call, which can be filed from inside the country. A foreign national who has lived and worked in Latvia for years, and whose permit is about to expire, can generate a new statistical entry without having moved.
PMLP also counts approved documents and the people named in them separately, because one document can cover several people. Its rules allow several family members with the same purpose of stay to be included in a single call. In 2024 the office approved 45,777 invitations and calls naming 54,958 people. In 2025 the figures rose to 51,212 documents and 61,192 people, an increase of about 11% in the number of people named. Those totals come from PMLP’s public reports.
CSP long-term migration statistics count people who have begun permanent life in Latvia or who stay for at least a year, using state registers and other systems, including records of work, study and medical care. On the latest published CSP figures, 14,701 people immigrated in 2024 and 13,826 in 2025, a fall of 6%. PMLP approved more invitations and calls in 2025 than in 2024, while the number of immigrants recorded by CSP went down.
The two offices measure different things and at different moments. PMLP logs a decision when it is made; the person may arrive months later, including in the next year, and a renewal or a newly issued permit need not involve any border crossing. Invitations can also be for short stays that never enter long-term migration statistics. CSP, meanwhile, includes people who do not need such invitations at all, such as Latvian citizens returning from abroad.
Of the 13,800 immigrants CSP recorded in 2025, 7,600, or 55.1%, were remigrants: Latvian citizens and non-citizens, and people born in Latvia who hold another citizenship and have returned from abroad. More than half of those in the official 2025 immigration total had lived in Latvia before. In the same year, 15,117 people left the country, almost 1,300 more than arrived.
That does not rule out growth in particular flows, including labour migration. Those flows have to be judged from figures for specific categories, not from the overall number of approved documents. The claim that 49,000 migrants, or 2.7% of the population, arrived in Latvia in eight months of 2026 does not match the records and misleads the public. On CSP data for 2025, immigration was about four times smaller: 13,800 people, or roughly 0.75% of the population, and more than half of them were remigrants.