Spain will register its first increase in births in a decade in 2025

Spain recorded its first increase in the number of births in a decade in 2025, at 1%, meaning that 321,164 children were born, 3,159 more than in 2024, according to the Monthly Birth Estimate published by the INE.

Although this is the first increase in ten years, its magnitude must be put into context: it is a slight increase considering that, compared to 2015, 99,126 fewer children are born each year in Spain.

We will therefore have to wait for the INE to publish the final data for 2025 and to see how this year's figures evolve to know if there has indeed been a change in the trend in the number of births in the country.

Despite the increase in births, the number of deaths is growing twice as fast, which is why the natural increase (the difference between births and deaths) is worsening. Specifically, in 2025 there were 446,982 deaths in the country, 2.5% more than the previous year, resulting in a negative natural increase of 122,167 people. This means that if Spain were to close its borders today and there were no migration (neither people entering nor leaving the country), the natural dynamics of births and deaths would cause the country to systematically lose population.

The evolution of births in the country in recent years has paralleled a delay in the age of motherhood. In relative terms, while in 2015 7.8% of births were to mothers aged 40 or over, by 2025 that percentage had risen to 10.4%.

By autonomous communities, the largest increases in the number of births in 2025 were recorded in the Community of Madrid (3.3%) and the Basque Country (3.0%); while the largest decreases were in the autonomous cities of Melilla (-10.1%) and Ceuta (-6.6%), and in the Balearic Islands (-2.6%).

Regarding deaths, the largest increases compared to 2024 occurred in the autonomous cities of Ceuta (16.5%) and Melilla (15.2%), and in the Canary Islands (5.9%). The largest decrease was recorded in La Rioja (-3.7%).

A woman is walking with her baby