What are the major religions?

In the last 175 years, the proportion of the population with no religion has risen from virtually zero to 58 percent. In 1849, the Netherlands was almost entirely Christian: 56 percent Protestant and 38 percent Roman Catholic. By 2023, 13 percent were Protestant and 17 percent Catholic.

In the mid-nineteenth century, a small group of people had a different faith (6 percent). These included Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews. In 1889, the census recorded 49 ‘Mohammedans’, as Muslims were called at that time. Most were immigrants from the Dutch East Indies. The share who said they had no religion was 2 percent.

Almost 8 in 10 people were Protestant or Roman Catholic in the 1960s

By just after the Second World War, the non-religious group had grown to 17 percent. At that time, the Netherlands still had slightly more Protestants than Roman Catholics (40 percent versus 38 percent of the population). By the next census, in 1960, this situation had reversed, and the group of non-believers had also grown slightly, to 18 percent.

Muslims made up 6 percent of the population in 2023

By the mid-twentieth century, there were several hundred Muslims in the Netherlands, according to population records. Their numbers increased in the 1950s due to immigration from Indonesia, and after 1960 due to the arrival of ‘guest workers’ and their families from Turkey and Morocco. In 2023, 6 percent of the population identified as Muslim. People of Turkish or Moroccan origin make up the largest Muslim population groups, but there are also Muslims with roots in Suriname, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries.

From estimates to surveys

Until 2005, CBS estimated the number of Muslims in the Netherlands by determining the number of Muslims in each group of inhabitants with a migration background. This was done based on the percentage of Muslims in each group’s country of origin. These numbers were then added up to calculate the total number of Muslims in the Netherlands. Later, it became clear that the distribution of religious affiliation among the people who had come to the Netherlands was different from the overall distribution in their countries of origin, and so the figures were refined in 2005. They now come from surveys in which people are asked about their religious affiliation directly. Since 2010, affiliation with Islam is also shown separately in a new StatLine table. Before that date, Islam fell under ‘Religious affiliation: other’, along with Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism.