Europe’s religious identity has been transformed over the past century, and the pace of change has accelerated sharply in the most recent decade. A continent that was almost entirely Christian at the start of the 1900s is now home to a large and growing share of people with no religious affiliation, alongside a Muslim population that continues to expand through both migration and higher birth rates. These shifts are reshaping politics, culture, education, and public policy across dozens of countries, from the secular strongholds of Western Europe to the historically observant nations of the East.
This article draws on data compiled by the Pew Research Center, the Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe, Eurobarometer surveys, and Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary’s Center for the Study of Global Christianity to trace how Europe’s religious composition has evolved from 1900 to today, how it changed over the last decade, and how demographers expect it to look by 2050.
Why Europe’s Religious Landscape Is Shifting So Quickly
Several forces are driving the transformation of religion across the continent.
- Secularization and religious switching, particularly among younger generations who were raised Christian but no longer identify with any faith
- Below replacement fertility rates among Christians and the unaffiliated, compared with higher fertility among Muslim populations
- Sustained immigration from Muslim-majority regions in the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa
- An aging Christian population with a median age well above that of Muslim and unaffiliated Europeans
- A stark East versus West divide, with post communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe showing more resilient religious affiliation than Western Europe
Europe is also the only major world region projected to see its total population shrink in the coming decades, which adds an extra layer of significance to every percentage point shift among religious groups.
Historical Background, From 1900 to the Turn of the Millennium
At the start of the twentieth century, Europe was overwhelmingly Christian. Nearly 95 percent of the continent’s population identified as Christian in 1900, making Europe the demographic center of world Christianity. Fewer than 1 percent of Europeans identified as agnostic or atheist, and the Jewish population made up roughly 2 percent of the continent, concentrated heavily in Central and Eastern Europe.
The twentieth century brought enormous disruption. The Holocaust devastated European Jewish communities, and decades of communist rule across Eastern Europe suppressed religious practice and pushed millions toward state-sanctioned atheism. At the same time, labor migration from Turkey, North Africa, and South Asia, beginning in the mid 1900s, introduced growing Muslim communities to Western European nations such as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.
By 1970, scholarly estimates place the Christian share of Europe’s population at roughly 75 percent, reflecting both the impact of communist era secularization in the east and early signs of religious decline in the west. The fall of communism after 1989 brought a partial religious revival across parts of Eastern Europe, as Orthodox and Catholic identity became closely tied to national identity and cultural renewal. This revival helped stabilize, and in some countries even modestly increase, the overall Christian share of the continent through the final decades of the century.
Past Population Trends: 1900 to 2010
| Year | Christian Share | Muslim Share | Jewish Share | Unaffiliated (Agnostic or Atheist) Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1900 | 95 percent | 2 percent | 2 percent | Under 1 percent |
| 1970 | 75 percent | 3 percent | 1 percent | 5 percent |
| 2010 | 76 percent | 6 percent | Under 1 percent | 19 percent |
Source: Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe (World Christian Database), Gordon Conwell Center for the Study of Global Christianity, and Pew Research Center Global Religious Landscape 2010 data. Figures are rounded and represent the share of the total European population.
The table above shows that Europe’s Christian share was remarkably stable across most of the twentieth century, holding in the mid seventies to mid-nineties range for decades. The real turning point came after 2010, when disaffiliation accelerated sharply across nearly every Western European country.
The Last Ten Years, A Decade of Accelerating Change
The most dramatic and well-documented shift in Europe’s religious composition occurred between 2010 and 2020, the most recent decade for which comprehensive continent-wide data has been published. According to the Pew Research Center, Europe’s total population grew only slightly during this period, from roughly 738 million to about 753 million people. Within that broadly stable population, the religious composition changed substantially.
Christians remained the largest group, but their share of the population fell from about 75 percent in 2010 to 67 percent in 2020, a drop of 8 percentage points in just ten years. In absolute numbers, the Christian population fell by roughly 9 percent, from an estimated 553 million to 505 million people. Much of this decline came through religious switching, as adults raised Christian increasingly identified as having no religion, combined with an older, more slowly replaced Christian population.
The religiously unaffiliated population saw the opposite trend, rising from about 19 percent of Europe’s population in 2010 to 25 percent in 2020, a gain of 7 percentage points. This pushed the unaffiliated population from roughly 140 million to nearly 190 million people over the decade.
Two of the most striking national-level changes were in France and the United Kingdom, both of which lost their Christian majority during this period, and the Netherlands, which joined the Czech Republic as an unaffiliated majority country. In the United Kingdom specifically, the Christian share fell by 13 percentage points while the unaffiliated share rose by 11 points, the single largest shift recorded in any European country during the decade.
Europe’s Muslim population grew modestly as a share of the total, from roughly 4 percent in 2010 to about 6 percent in 2020, though this shift was unevenly distributed. Countries that accepted large numbers of refugees during the 2014 to 2016 crisis, such as Sweden, saw much larger increases.
Sweden’s Muslim share roughly doubled during this window. Europe’s Jewish population continued its long decline, falling by about 8 percent in absolute numbers to approximately 1.3 million people by 2020, still concentrated primarily in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Russia.
Last Ten Years Trends: 2010 to 2020
| Religious Group | 2010 Population | 2010 Share | 2020 Population | 2020 Share | Change in Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Christian | 553 million | 75 percent | 505 million | 67 percent | Down 8 points |
| Religiously Unaffiliated | 140 million | 19 percent | 188 million | 25 percent | Up 7 points |
| Muslim | 43 million | 4 to 6 percent | 45 million | 6 percent | Up roughly 1 point |
| Jewish | 1.4 million | Under 1 percent | 1.3 million | Under 1 percent | Roughly flat |
Source: Pew Research Center, “How religious groups’ sizes changed in Europe, 2010 to 2020,” published 2025. Figures are rounded to the nearest million and nearest whole percentage point.
Country-Level Examples From the Last Decade
The overall continental figures mask enormous variation at the national level. A handful of examples illustrate how uneven this transformation has been.
- The United Kingdom saw Christians fall to just under half of the population by 2020, while the unaffiliated rose to about 40 percent, the largest percentage point swing recorded anywhere in Europe during the decade
- Estonia’s unaffiliated population grew to roughly 44 percent, the highest share recorded in any European country
- France lost its Christian majority during this period, continuing a secularization trend that Eurobarometer surveys have tracked since at least the early 2000s
- The Netherlands became the second country in Europe, after the Czech Republic, where the religiously unaffiliated form the largest group
- Sweden’s Muslim population share roughly doubled between 2010 and 2020 as a direct result of refugee resettlement policy during the Syrian crisis
- Post communist countries such as Poland and Romania have generally retained higher levels of Christian affiliation than Western Europe, though Eurobarometer belief surveys still show declining rates of religious belief even in these traditionally observant nations
Eurobarometer data on religious belief in the European Union tells a similar story from a different angle. The EU-wide Christian identification rate fell from 72 percent in 2012 to 64 percent in 2019, while the share identifying as non-believer, agnostic, or atheist rose to 27 percent combined. Countries that saw the steepest declines in stated religious belief between 2010 and 2018 include Italy, Poland, Portugal, Greece, and Romania, each recording double-digit percentage point drops in the share of people who say they believe in God.
Looking Ahead, Europe’s Religious Future Through 2050
Pew Research Center’s long-range demographic projections, built using a cohort component model that accounts for fertility, mortality, migration, and religious switching, offer the most rigorous available forecast for how Europe’s religious composition will look at midcentury.
Under the baseline projection published in 2015, Europe’s Christian population is expected to fall from 553 million in 2010 to about 454 million by 2050, even as the Christian share of the world’s overall Christian population continues shrinking relative to fast-growing sub-Saharan Africa.
Europe’s Christian share of its own population is projected to decline from 75 percent in 2010 to 65 percent by 2050. The religiously unaffiliated population is projected to keep growing, from 140 million in 2010 to about 162 million by 2050, though its share of the population rises only modestly, from 19 percent to 23 percent, because the unaffiliated population itself is aging and has a low fertility rate of about 1.4 children per woman.
The most significant proportional change is expected among Muslims. Pew’s baseline 2010 to 2050 projection has Europe’s Muslim population rising by 63 percent, from 43 million to 71 million, pushing the Muslim share of Europe’s population from under 6 percent in 2010 to just over 10 percent by 2050. This growth is driven by a combination of higher fertility (2.1 children per woman among European Muslims compared with 1.6 for Christians and 1.4 for the unaffiliated) and a younger median age, 32 years among Muslims compared with 42 among Christians and 40 for Europe overall.
A separate and more detailed 2017 Pew analysis modeled three distinct migration scenarios for the Muslim population of the 28 European Union countries plus Norway and Switzerland, using a mid 2016 baseline of 25.8 million Muslims, or 4.9 percent of the population.
- Zero migration scenario, assuming all migration into these countries stopped completely after 2016. Even under this scenario, the Muslim population would still rise to 7.4 percent of the population by 2050, purely due to a younger age structure and higher fertility
- Medium migration scenario, assuming only regular non-refugee migration continued at historical patterns. Under this scenario, the Muslim share would reach 11.2 percent by 2050
- High migration scenario, assuming refugee flows at the levels seen between 2014 and 2016 continued indefinitely. Under this scenario, the Muslim share would reach 14 percent by 2050
Pew researchers were explicit that these are not predictions but illustrative scenarios meant to show the range of plausible outcomes depending on future migration policy, which remains the single largest source of uncertainty in any projection of this kind. Europe’s Jewish population, by contrast, is projected to continue its long decline, falling from 1.4 million in 2010 to about 1.2 million by 2050.
Future Projected Population Trends: 2010 to 2050
| Religious Group | 2010 Population | 2010 Share | 2050 Projected Population | 2050 Projected Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Christian | 553 million | 75 percent | 454 million | 65 percent |
| Religiously Unaffiliated | 140 million | 19 percent | 162 million | 23 percent |
| Muslim (baseline projection) | 43 million | Under 6 percent | 71 million | Just over 10 percent |
| Jewish | 1.4 million | Under 1 percent | 1.2 million | Under 1 percent |
Source: Pew Research Center, “The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010 to 2050,” published 2015. Muslim figures reflect Pew’s baseline continental projection, which differs slightly from the separate EU plus Norway and Switzerland migration scenario model published in 2017.
Combined Table, Europe’s Religious Composition From 1900 to 2050
The table below brings together the historical, recent, and projected figures into a single view of how Europe’s religious makeup has evolved and is expected to continue evolving.
| Year | Christian Share | Muslim Share | Jewish Share | Unaffiliated Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1900 | 95 percent | 2 percent | 2 percent | Under 1 percent |
| 1970 | 75 percent | 3 percent | 1 percent | 5 percent |
| 2010 | 75 percent | Under 6 percent | Under 1 percent | 19 percent |
| 2020 | 67 percent | 6 percent | Under 1 percent | 25 percent |
| 2050 (Projected) | 65 percent | Roughly 10 to 14 percent | Under 1 percent | 23 percent |
Source: Compiled from Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe, Gordon Conwell Center for the Study of Global Christianity, and Pew Research Center historical and projected data, 1900 through 2050. Figures are rounded and reflect the share of the total European population. The 2050 Muslim range reflects the span between Pew’s baseline projection and its medium to high migration scenario projections.
Several patterns stand out clearly from this combined view. The Christian share of Europe’s population held remarkably steady for most of the twentieth century before falling sharply after 2010, losing more percentage points in a single decade than it had in the previous seventy years combined.
The unaffiliated share shows the mirror image of this trend, rising slowly through the twentieth century before accelerating rapidly after 2010. The Muslim share has grown steadily and consistently across the entire period, and is on track to represent Europe’s most significant proportional gain by 2050, regardless of which migration scenario ultimately proves accurate.
Regional Divides, East Versus West
One of the most important nuances in Europe’s religious transformation is the persistent divide between Western Europe and the post communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
- Western European countries, including France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, and the Czech Republic, have experienced the steepest and most sustained secularization, with unaffiliated populations now forming a plurality or outright majority in several cases
- Central and Eastern European countries, including Poland, Romania, and several Balkan states, have generally retained higher rates of Christian identification, though even here, survey-based measures of actual religious belief and practice show meaningful declines since 2010
- Predominantly Muslim majority populations remain concentrated in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, a legacy of the Ottoman era presence in the Balkans
- Cyprus retains the highest Muslim population share within the European Union, a result of the historical Turkish Cypriot community in the northern part of the island, and this is not expected to change dramatically under any migration scenario
This east-west divide means that national-level policy debates around religion, immigration, and secularism can look very different depending on where in Europe the conversation is happening, even as the continent-wide averages point toward a common overall direction.
What This Means for Policy, Culture, and Society
The rapid pace of religious change in Europe carries consequences well beyond survey statistics.
- Declining Christian affiliation has coincided with falling church attendance across most of Western Europe, prompting many historic congregations to consolidate, close, or repurpose buildings
- The growth of the unaffiliated population has influenced public debate around religious education, blasphemy laws, and the role of religious symbols in public institutions in countries such as France
- A growing and younger Muslim population has become a central factor in debates over integration policy, labor markets, and national identity in countries including Germany, France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom
- Aging Christian populations combined with a shrinking overall European population are contributing to broader demographic and economic pressures, including labor shortages that some countries have sought to address partly through immigration
- Researchers note that religious identity in Europe is increasingly correlated with generational divides, with younger Europeans significantly more likely than older Europeans to identify as unaffiliated.
Conclusion
Europe’s religious landscape has changed more in the last fifteen years than in the previous several decades combined. Christianity remains the majority faith across most of the continent, but its dominance is thinning steadily as secularization spreads and as an aging Christian population is only partially replaced.
The religiously unaffiliated have become the second largest group across Europe as a whole and the largest group in a small but growing number of countries. Meanwhile, Europe’s Muslim population continues to grow through both migration and higher fertility, and is on track to represent a meaningfully larger share of the continent’s population by 2050 under any realistic scenario.
These shifts are not uniform, with a persistent divide between a rapidly secularizing West and a more religiously stable East, but the overall direction of travel across the continent is clear, and it points toward a Europe that will look religiously very different at midcentury than it did at the start of the twentieth century.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Christianity declining in Europe?
Yes. Christianity remains the largest religion in Europe, but its share of the population fell from about 75 percent in 2010 to 67 percent in 2020, and is projected to fall further to about 65 percent by 2050, according to Pew Research Center.
Which religious group is growing fastest in Europe?
The religiously unaffiliated grew the fastest in percentage point terms over the last decade, rising 7 points between 2010 and 2020. Looking further ahead to 2050, Europe’s Muslim population is projected to see the largest proportional increase of any religious group, potentially more than doubling its population share depending on future migration levels.
Which European countries no longer have a Christian majority?
The United Kingdom and France both lost their Christian majorities between 2010 and 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. The Netherlands and the Czech Republic are now unaffiliated majority countries.
How large could Europe’s Muslim population become by 2050?
Pew Research Center’s scenarios for the European Union plus Norway and Switzerland range from 7.4 percent under a zero migration scenario to as much as 14 percent under a high migration scenario, up from about 4.9 percent in 2016.
Is religious change the same across all of Europe?
No. Western European countries have secularized the fastest, while many Central and Eastern European countries have retained higher levels of Christian identification, reflecting different historical experiences under communism and different patterns of immigration.
What is driving the growth of the unaffiliated population?
The primary driver is religious switching, in which adults raised Christian no longer identify with any religion as adults, combined with younger generations being less likely to adopt religious identity in the first place.
