New Zealand — Stats NZ International migration: December 2025

Citation

Stats NZ. “International migration: December 2025.” Published 2026-02-13. Accessed 2026-07-17. Original release.

Authority and scope

Stats NZ is New Zealand’s official national statistics agency. This release reports outcomes-based international-migration estimates for the year ended December 2025. It measures changes in country of residence using a 12-month threshold, regardless of citizenship or visa status.

Original summary

Provisional estimates for the December 2025 year were 134,000 migrant arrivals, 119,800 migrant departures, and a net migration gain of 14,200. The release compares that net gain with 23,800 in the December 2024 year. It attributes the 2025 total to a net gain of 54,200 non-New Zealand citizens and a net loss of 40,000 New Zealand citizens. The page also provides downloadable tables and CSV files, including data by citizenship and visa, but those datasets were not analysed for this record.

Consequential claims supported

• Claim: The provisional annual net migration estimate for the year ended December 2025 was a gain of 14,200, with an uncertainty interval of ±1,600.
  • Jurisdiction: New Zealand
  • Applicable date: Year ended 2025-12
  • Accessed: 2026-07-17
  • Limitations: The estimate is provisional and subject to revision; it is not a student-migration or visa-grant count.
• Claim: Outcomes-based migration statistics classify changes in country of residence using a 12-month threshold, regardless of citizenship or visa status.
  • Jurisdiction: New Zealand
  • Applicable date: Methodology described in the 2026-02-13 release
  • Accessed: 2026-07-17
  • Limitations: This statistical definition cannot be used interchangeably with immigration-law categories or visa administrative data.

Limitations

Estimates from September 2024 onward were identified as provisional. The release is population-movement evidence, not immigration eligibility guidance. Aggregate arrivals, departures, and net migration do not establish the number, behaviour, or outcomes of international students. Downloadable visa-level datasets require separate analysis and methodological review before supporting narrower claims.

Rights and preservation note

link-summary-only is used because redistribution rights were not assessed. No source body, spreadsheet, CSV file, graph, or image was copied.