Who lives where in London
8,806,104 residents by country of birth, Census day, 21 March 2021. One dot ≈ 25 people, placed at random inside each of 26,369 census output areas. The United Kingdom group starts hidden so the minorities stand out — click any group to show or hide it, and hover an area for its official counts.
What the colours mean
Country of birth. Groups are country of birth, so London-born children of migrants count as UK-born. Census 2021 ran during the pandemic, when some EU-born residents had left temporarily.
- United Kingdom5,224,027 · 59.3%
Born in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
- EU14578,906 · 6.6%
Born in the 14 pre-2004 EU states, including Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Germany.
- EU8 + EU2 + other EU543,937 · 6.2%
Born in Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Bulgaria and the other EU states that joined from 2004.
- Rest of Europe243,930 · 2.8%
Born in a European country outside the EU: Albania, Ukraine, Russia, the Balkans, Norway, Switzerland. ONS counts Türkiye in the Middle East.
- North Africa66,311 · 0.8%
Born in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia or Western Sahara.
- Sub-Saharan Africa559,322 · 6.4%
Born in Central, Western, Southern or Eastern Africa (Nigeria, Ghana, Somalia, Kenya, Zimbabwe…).
- Middle East & Central Asia155,214 · 1.8%
Born in the Middle East (Iran, Iraq, Türkiye, Syria, Israel, Gulf states…) or Central Asia.
- South Asia742,243 · 8.4%
Born in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan or Nepal.
- East & South-East Asia248,649 · 2.8%
Born in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and the rest of East and South-East Asia.
- North America & Caribbean222,147 · 2.5%
Born in the US, Canada, Jamaica, Trinidad and the rest of the Caribbean.
- Central & South America150,658 · 1.7%
Born in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and the rest of Central and South America.
- Oceania & other70,760 · 0.8%
Born in Australia, New Zealand and Oceania, British Overseas Territories, or elsewhere.
What is exact and what is not
- Exact: how many people of each group live in each of the 26,369 census output areas, as published by the source below. The Exact areas view and the hover numbers show these figures directly.
- Not exact: where a dot sits inside its output area. Dots are scattered at random within the area's boundary — including over parks, railways or water inside it — so a dot never marks a real home, and a pattern smaller than one output area is not in the data.
- Rounded: each count becomes count ÷ 25 dots, rounded up or down at random, so very small groups in an area can show one dot more or fewer than the exact figure would give.
Related: UK census map — ethnic group — A different census question (ethnic group, not country of birth), shaded by exact share for each borough and MSOA across England and Wales.
Source and method
Counts: Office for National Statistics (ONS), Census 2021 — TS004 Country of birth; country_of_birth_22a via the ONS Census API.
Boundaries: Output Areas (December 2021) Boundaries EW BGC (ONS Open Geography Portal).
Method: European groups come from table TS004 and the rest from the 22-category country-of-birth classification, both at output-area level. ONS adds small random noise to each table separately (cell-key perturbation), so an area's total can differ by a few people between the two. Each area's count for each group becomes count ÷ 25 dots (rounded up or down at random, so totals are right on average), scattered uniformly inside the area — a dot's exact position means nothing, only the area does. 352,353 dots in all. Map style after Karim Douïeb's Brussels. A lovely Melting-Pot.