As borders reopened in 2022, 668 Americans traveled to Luxembourg to reclaim their Luxembourg citizenship, the highest year on record. Despite this trend, overall, this year still saw fewer total applicants recover citizenship through ancestry than all recent years but 2021.
2022: Total New Luxembourg Citizens Remain Below Pre-Pandemic Levels
Luxembourg’s Ministry of Justice has released its Nationality Statistics for 2022. In total, 10,500 people acquired Luxembourgish citizenship in 2022. This figure includes all procedures for Luxembourgish citizenship, including those unrelated to citizenship through ancestry. This is a 54% increase from the 6,801 people who got Luxembourg citizenship in 2021. However, this is still 8% below the last pre-pandemic year, 2019, where 11,451 got Luxembourgish citizenship.
Among the countries the 10,500 new citizens came from, Brazil came in first place with 3,080 adults. The US came in 4th place with 889 adults. The top five nationalities applying were: Brazilian (3,080), Portuguese (1,227), French (1,191), USA (889) and Belgian (551).
Statistics For Article 89
Of the 10,500 people who got Luxembourg citizenship in 2022, 4,271 (41%) reclaimed Luxembourg Citizenship through an ancestor alive on January 1st, 1900 (Article 89 of the Luxembourg Nationality Law).
The countries with the most people reclaiming citizenship through ancestry in 2022 were Brazil (3,080) and the US (668). In total, 3,181 Americans and 8,215 Brazilians have obtained citizenship through Article 89 to date.
By comparison, when partial Covid-19 travel restrictions were in place in 2021, only 77 people from the US and 90 from Brazil were able to apply for citizenship.
For both the USA and Brazil, 2022 was the year where the most applicants applied under Article 89. However, besides 2021, 2022 was the year with the lowest number of people reclaiming Luxembourg citizenship through ancestry since 2017. Undoubtedly, Covid-19 continued to have an impact on these figures into 2022.
Article 89 Statistics Over the Years
Despite the opening of borders and a December 31st, 2022 deadline, overall numbers remain down compared to previous years. Read our article to explore why.
LuxCitizenship Statistics
LuxCitizenship clients accounted for 7% (50 people) of the 668 American adult applicants who got citizenship in 2022 under Article 89. The Government’s statistics include information on other paths to citizenship than Article 89. LuxCitizenship clients accounted for 77 (44%) of 176 American adults who got Luxembourg citizenship under Article 23 in 2022. The Government does not distinguish between Article 23 and the Article 7/23 combo in its statistics.
In total, LuxCitizenship clients accounted for 14% of all Americans getting Luxembourg citizenship this year (889). The figure includes Americans who live in Luxembourg and naturalized as citizenship The Luxembourg Government releases no statistics related to Article 7. 269 American adult LuxCitizenship clients received citizenship under Article 7 in 2022.
