Marrakech – Italy issued 44,549 first residence permits to Moroccan nationals in 2025, a 72.8% increase from the previous year, placing Morocco first among non-EU countries of origin, according to figures released Thursday by Italy’s National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT).
The jump returned Morocco to the top of the ranking. Bangladesh followed with 39,807 new permits, up 41.9%, and Egypt came third with 32,235, a 59.4% rise. India recorded the sharpest increase of all, 78.8%, reaching 30,227 permits and overtaking Pakistan to take fifth place. Albania slipped one spot to fourth, with 31,777 permits and a more modest growth of 30.1%.
Family reunification drove much of Morocco’s standing. Moroccans led all nationalities in family-related permits, with 23,467 issued, ahead of Albanians at 21,131, Egyptians at 12,622, Pakistanis at 10,026, and Indians at 9,635.
For Albania and Morocco, the two oldest-established communities in Italy, family permits accounted for more than half of all new documents issued during the year.
Work permits shifted the order. Morocco ranked second behind India for labor-related entries, with 10,575 permits, or 17.9% of the total, against India’s 13,783.
Seasonal work dominated both. For Morocco, seasonal permits made up 59.3% of all work-related entries, compared with 58.8% for India. Among women entering for work, Moroccans placed second with 1,176 permits, behind the United States and ahead of the Philippines, India, and Tunisia.
Study permits showed weaker participation. Across the ten largest nationalities, Moroccan women made up 38.8% of study entries, below the halfway mark and among the lowest shares recorded.
Asylum outcomes weighed heavily on Moroccan applicants. Italy’s territorial commissions for international protection rejected about two-thirds of first-instance asylum claims overall, and the refusal rate reached 90.2% for migrants from Morocco, the highest among the groups cited, followed by Sri Lanka at 89% and Bangladesh at 88.7%.
Morocco’s numbers landed within a record national year. Italy issued 426,956 new residence permits in 2025, a 47.2% increase from the 290,119 granted in 2024.
ISTAT described the figure as the highest in fifteen years, trailing only the 2022 peak tied to the arrival of refugees from Ukraine. Growth centered on family reunification, up 61.2%, and study, up 76.0%. Work permits rose 45.9%, and 83.2% of them went to men.
Asylum requests moved in the opposite direction. Applications fell 15.1%, to 128,665 from 151,120 the year before, while the commissions examined 104,560 first instances and rejected 70% of them.
Geography concentrated the flows. Lombardy received 23.0% of all new permits, or 98,128 documents, followed at a distance by Emilia-Romagna with 9.1%, or 38,789.
Beyond the yearly flows, Morocco remained the largest single non-EU community holding valid permits at the end of 2025, ahead of Albania and China. The total stock of valid permits rose 5.8% over the year, from 3,810,741 to 4,030,016.
That rootedness showed in citizenship too. For every 100 Moroccans holding a residence permit, another 72 people of Moroccan origin had already become Italian citizens, a ratio second only to Albania’s.
Moroccans also ranked second among those who became Italian in 2025, with 23,386 new citizens, or 13.1% of the total, behind Albanians at 25,725, or 14.4%.
For both communities, the most deeply settled in Italy, more than 80% of acquisitions came through long residence and transmission to minor children. Marriage-based acquisitions, up 7.5% from 2024, mainly involved women of Albanian and Moroccan origin.
By the close of 2025, more than 4 million non-EU citizens held valid residence permits in Italy. Over the same year, just above 178,000 non-EU nationals acquired Italian citizenship.
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