According to data from the Continuous Population Statistics published by the National Statistics Institute (INE), the Canary Islands gained 1,460 inhabitants in the first half of the year, bringing the total population to 2,277,705. This increase is exclusively due to a rise in foreign-born residents, who increased by 4,717 in six months, while those born in Spain decreased by 3,257.
Currently, 24.3% of the Canary Islands' population, equivalent to 553,265 people, are from a foreign country. This percentage has risen by 0.5 percentage points compared to July 2025, when it stood at 23.7%.
Nationally, Spain's population growth has also been driven by an increase in foreign-born individuals, as the number of those born in Spain has decreased. The foreign-born population in Spain now stands at 10,291,807 people, exceeding the number of foreign nationals due to the acquisition of Spanish nationality.
Over the past year, the number of Spanish-born residents in the islands has fallen by 0.11%, from 1,726,393 in July 2025 to 1,724,440 in the same month of 2026. The population growth in the Canary Islands in the first six months of the year was 0.06%, and over the last year, the increase was 0.53%.
The archipelago ranks among the autonomous communities with the lowest population increase in the first half of the year and the lowest percentage growth in the last quarter. At the national level, the Spanish population on July 1, 2026, was 49,801,559 inhabitants.
