Italian citizens belonging to religious minorities 2026

Number of Italian citizens belonging to religious minorities in 2026

Italy is overwhelmingly Catholic, yet beneath that surface lies a small but remarkably varied world of religious minorities. In 2026, around 2.3 million Italian citizens, about 4.3% of the total, belong to a faith outside the Catholic majority and the large non-religious population. The largest single minority is Islam, with roughly 566,000 followers, followed closely by Eastern Orthodox Christians at about 445,000 and Jehovah's Witnesses at around 414,000. Protestants number some 366,000 and Buddhists about 218,000, with a long tail of smaller communities. Among those smaller groups are the Protestant denominations detailed in our Italian Protestants by denomination analysis, which sits within this wider minority landscape. Taken together, these communities make Italy far more religiously varied than its Catholic reputation implies, even if each individual group remains numerically small within the country as a whole.

What stands out is the diversity packed into that 4.3%. Italy's religious minorities are not dominated by a single faith but spread across Islam, three large strands of non-Catholic Christianity, two sizeable Eastern religions and dozens of smaller movements. This reflects two very different forces: long-established communities such as the Waldensians and Italian Jews, and newer growth driven by immigration and conversion, especially among Muslims, Orthodox Christians and Buddhists. The result is one of western Europe's more plural minority scenes, even though the overall share remains modest. These patterns mirror the broader continental picture set out in our religion in Europe analysis. What sets Italy apart within that European frame is the sheer balance among its top minorities, with no single non-Catholic faith able to claim clear dominance over the others.

A few points help in reading the figures. They count Italian citizens only, so the totals understate the full religious presence in Italy, which is far larger once around five million non-citizen residents are included. The core numbers, the Islamic, Orthodox, Jehovah's Witness, Protestant and Buddhist totals, are well grounded in CESNUR's detailed 2023 estimate. The comparisons between citizens and all residents, and the long-term growth trend shown later, are estimates derived from published data and flagged as such. Religious counts of this kind are always approximate, especially for immigrant communities, but the overall ranking and scale are reliable and stable. For that reason, the charts and tables in this report are best read as a dependable guide to the relative size and ranking of each faith rather than as an exact population census.

Italian Religious Minorities by Faith: Full Table

The table shows just how front-loaded the minority landscape is. The top four faiths, Islam, Orthodoxy, the Jehovah's Witnesses and Protestantism, each number in the hundreds of thousands and together account for nearly four in five minority citizens. Below them, Buddhism stands out as the largest Eastern tradition, while Hindus, Jews, Mormons and Sikhs each fall in the tens of thousands. A long tail of esoteric, New Age and human-potential movements fills out the remainder. This concentration at the top, with great variety underneath, is the defining shape of Italy's minority faiths, with a handful of very large communities towering over a long and unusually varied tail of much smaller ones.

Share of Italian Minority Believers by Faith

Expressed as shares of the minority population, the balance becomes clearer. Muslims make up about 24.6% of all Italian-citizen minority believers, Eastern Orthodox Christians 19.4%, Jehovah's Witnesses 18.0% and Protestants 15.9%. Buddhists account for 9.5%, with all the remaining faiths and movements together making up the final 12.6%. No single group holds a majority, which sets Italy apart from countries where one minority faith dominates. The largest, Islam, is examined in a global frame in our countries with the largest Muslim population analysis. The relatively even spread also means that no one community can speak for Italy's religious minorities as a whole, since each of the largest groups is comparable in size to the next.

This relatively even split among the top groups is unusual and revealing. It means that public debate about religious minorities in Italy cannot focus on Islam alone, since Orthodox Christians, Jehovah's Witnesses and Protestants are each comparable in size. It also means the minority scene is genuinely multi-religious rather than a single large community plus fragments. For policymakers and researchers, the practical implication is that recognition, funding and integration questions touch many groups at once, not just the most visible. The contrast with more lopsided minority landscapes is sharp, as our non-Catholic believers in Spain analysis shows for another Catholic country. In Italy, the minority field is shared more evenly, which arguably makes integration and recognition a broader and more collective question than in countries dominated by a single minority faith.

Minorities by Broad Faith Family

Grouping the minorities into broad families produces a surprising result: most of Italy's religious-minority citizens are themselves Christian. Adding the Orthodox, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Protestants, the Mormons and smaller Christian-origin groups gives roughly 1.29 million people, well over half of all minority believers. Non-Christian religions, led by Islam and Buddhism, together number around 914,000. A further 91,000 or so belong to spiritual and new religious movements, from New Age and human-potential groups to esoteric traditions. So the headline minority story is as much about non-Catholic Christianity as about other world faiths, a nuance often missed, and one that echoes the Christian focus of our evangelical church members in Germany analysis.

This Christian-heavy structure matters for how Italy thinks about religious diversity. Much public attention falls on Islam, yet in citizen terms the larger story is the spread of non-Catholic Christianity, through Orthodox immigration, the long Jehovah's Witness presence and the Pentecostal surge among Protestants. The non-Christian religions, though smaller in citizen numbers, are growing fast, especially Islam and Buddhism. The spiritual and new-movement category, while modest, signals the same Western turn toward individual spirituality seen across Europe. Together these families show a minority landscape that is Christian at its core but increasingly plural at its edges. That combination of a Christian-majority core and a fast-diversifying fringe is precisely what makes the Italian minority landscape so distinctive among the historically Catholic nations of southern Europe today.

The Wider Religious Landscape of Italy

The minorities only make sense against Italy's overall religious profile. By CESNUR's estimate, about 74.5% of people in Italy are Catholic, while roughly 15.3% are atheist or agnostic. Non-Catholic Christians make up around 4.1%, Muslims about 3.7%, and followers of other religions, including Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, Baha'is and Sikhs, around 2.2%. In other words, religious minorities and the non-religious together account for roughly a quarter of the country, with Catholicism still the clear majority. This is the backdrop against which every minority community operates, a deeply Catholic society also explored in our Catholic population in Germany analysis. Against that overwhelmingly Catholic and increasingly secular backdrop, even a minority numbering several hundred thousand registers as only a thin sliver of the national whole, which is exactly what the figures confirm.

Two features stand out from this landscape. First, the non-religious bloc, at over 15%, is now far larger than any single religious minority, a sign of the secularisation reshaping Catholic Europe. Second, the religious minorities, though only a few percent each, are growing while Catholic practice declines, so their relative weight is rising over time. This means that Italy's religious future is likely to be both more secular and more plural, with minorities playing a larger role even as the Catholic label remains dominant on paper. Understanding this dual trend is essential to interpreting the minority figures that follow. It also explains why small shifts among the minorities draw attention well beyond their size, since they signal the slow reshaping of a religious order that went effectively uncontested for centuries.

Italy's Largest Non-Catholic Christian Communities

Because so many minorities are Christian, it is worth looking at the largest non-Catholic Christian bodies on their own. Eastern Orthodox Christians lead with about 445,000 citizens, followed by Jehovah's Witnesses at around 414,000 and Protestants at 366,000, with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, adding roughly 28,500. Each of these is larger than most non-Christian minorities, and together they form the backbone of religious diversity in Italy. Their growth, especially Orthodox immigration and the Pentecostal expansion within Protestantism, is reshaping the Christian map of a country long defined solely by Catholicism, a shift comparable to changes traced in our religion in England and Wales analysis. The rise of these communities means that, for the first time in centuries, non-Catholic Christianity is a meaningful presence in Italian religious life rather than a historical footnote confined to a few Alpine valleys.

These communities differ sharply in character. The Orthodox are largely an immigrant population from Romania, Ukraine and other Eastern European countries, the Jehovah's Witnesses are a long-established and tightly organised movement active in Italy since 1903, and the Protestants range from historic Waldensians to fast-growing Pentecostal congregations. Despite their differences, all three have benefited from formal or informal recognition that allows them to operate openly. Their combined presence means non-Catholic Christianity, once almost invisible in Italy, is now a significant and varied part of the religious landscape, even if it remains far smaller than the Catholic mainstream. Their visibility in public life, through schools, charities and recognised places of worship, now far exceeds what their relatively modest membership figures alone would once have suggested was possible in Italy.

The Bigger Picture: Religion Among Non-Citizens

The citizen figures tell only part of the story, because Italy is home to around five million non-citizen residents whose religious profile is very different. By CESNUR's estimate, about 34% of these residents are Muslim and 27% Orthodox Christian, with roughly 16% Catholic and the rest spread across other faiths. This immigrant population dramatically enlarges the Muslim and Orthodox communities in particular, turning what look like modest citizen minorities into major religious presences nationwide. The link between migration and religious change here is part of a global pattern explored in our world religions analysis of shifting faith demographics. Without accounting for this large immigrant population, any portrait of religion in Italy would badly understate just how Muslim and Orthodox the country has quietly become over the past two decades.

This non-citizen profile explains why headline numbers for Islam and Orthodoxy in Italy vary so widely. Counting citizens alone, Muslims number around 566,000; counting all residents, the Muslim population rises to well over two million. The same is true of Orthodoxy, which is far larger once immigrant worshippers are added. For Catholicism, the effect runs the other way, since most immigrants are not Catholic, gradually diluting the Catholic share of the resident population. Anyone interpreting Italian religious statistics therefore needs to be clear about whether the figures cover citizens, residents or both, since the answers differ enormously. The practical takeaway is that any responsible figure for Islam or Orthodoxy in Italy should state its basis, because the citizen count and the all-resident count can differ by a factor of three or more.

Citizens vs All Residents: How the Numbers Change

Setting citizen and resident figures side by side shows how migration transforms the picture. Among citizens alone, there are about 566,000 Muslims and 445,000 Orthodox Christians. Once non-citizen residents are added, the Muslim total climbs to an estimated 2.3 million and the Orthodox to around 1.8 million, several times their citizen counts. These resident totals are estimates, combining the citizen figures with CESNUR's breakdown of the five million foreign residents, but the direction is unmistakable: immigration is the single biggest driver of religious diversity in modern Italy. This dynamic of migration reshaping a Catholic society also features in our belief in God in France by age analysis of generational and demographic change. The same forces of migration and generational turnover reshaping faith elsewhere in Europe are clearly visible in Italy, where the gap between citizen and resident religion is unusually wide.

The gap between citizen and resident figures is not a contradiction but a reflection of Italy's recent history of immigration. Many Muslim and Orthodox residents are first-generation migrants who have not acquired citizenship, so they fall outside the citizen counts even though they are a visible religious presence. Over time, as second generations are born and naturalised, more of these believers will appear in the citizen statistics, gradually enlarging the recorded minorities. For now, the citizen and resident views are best read together, since each captures a real but partial slice of religious life in contemporary Italy. As naturalisation continues and the Italian-born children of migrants come of age, the citizen figures will steadily converge toward the resident totals, making the official statistics look far more diverse than they do today.

Spotlight: Jehovah's Witnesses in Italy

One of the most striking findings is the scale of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Italy. Counting adherents, around 414,000 Italian citizens are linked to the movement, of whom about 250,000 are baptised full members. That makes the Witnesses the second-largest organised Christian denomination in the country after the Catholic Church, and gives Italy one of the largest Witness communities in the world. Active in Italy since 1903 and recognised by the state, the movement has built a substantial, tightly organised presence that far outstrips most other minorities. Its sheer size, backed by formal state recognition, sets it apart from most other minorities and recalls the church-and-state funding arrangements in our Catholic Church tax revenue in Germany analysis.

The Witnesses' prominence reshapes how we should think about Italian Christianity. While public attention focuses on the Catholic Church and, increasingly, on Islam, the quiet growth of a 400,000-strong Witness community has made it a major religious actor in its own right. The gap between full members and total adherents reflects the movement's distinctive structure, in which baptised members form a committed core surrounded by a wider circle of participants. Recognised by the state and active in every region, the Jehovah's Witnesses illustrate how Italy's religious minorities include not only immigrant faiths but also large, home-grown alternative Christian movements. The contrast between the quiet, organised expansion of the Witnesses and the louder public debate around immigrant faiths is one of the more revealing features of how religious change is perceived in modern Italy.

The Growth of Italy's Religious Minorities

Italy's religious minorities have grown steadily over recent decades, driven mainly by immigration and, to a lesser extent, conversion. An illustrative reading of the trend would show the citizen minority population rising from somewhere around 1.8 million in 2010 to about 2.3 million by 2023, a steady climb even as the Catholic share has slipped. The fastest growth has come among Muslims, Orthodox Christians and Buddhists, reflecting both new arrivals and the naturalisation of earlier migrants. This expansion is reshaping the religious character of a country once almost uniformly Catholic, part of the broader European story told in our religious communities in Finland analysis. Italy's path, from near-uniform Catholicism toward a more plural and partly secular society, broadly tracks the wider European pattern, even though it began that journey later than most of its northern neighbours.

The exact path of this growth is illustrative rather than precise, since consistent long-run figures are scarce, but the direction is well documented. As immigration continues and second generations are born in Italy, the recorded minority population is likely to keep rising, even if net migration slows. At the same time, secularisation is eroding the Catholic majority from within. The combined effect points to a future Italy that is both less Catholic in practice and more religiously diverse, with minorities, especially Muslim and Orthodox communities, accounting for an ever larger share of the believing population over the coming decades. Whether that growth accelerates or levels off will depend heavily on future migration patterns, on naturalisation rates, and on whether the spiritual energy now visible among some communities can be sustained across generations.

Italian Religious Minorities: The Key Numbers

Drawing the threads together, the key numbers describe a small but diverse and growing minority population. Islam leads at around 566,000 citizens, followed by Eastern Orthodox Christians at 445,000, Jehovah's Witnesses at 414,000, Protestants at 366,000 and Buddhists at 218,000. Together with smaller communities of Hindus, Jews, Mormons and Sikhs, they bring the total to about 2.3 million Italian citizens, some 4.3% of the population, a figure that swells dramatically once non-citizen residents are counted. This blend of established and immigrant faiths is the essence of the story, set within the Catholic context detailed in our interfaith Catholic weddings in Germany analysis.

Taken together, the figures show that Italy, while still overwhelmingly Catholic on paper, hosts a genuinely plural minority landscape that is quietly expanding. A near-even spread among the largest groups, a Christian-heavy core, and a fast-growing immigrant dimension all combine to make religious diversity a more important feature of Italian life than the headline Catholic majority would suggest. For researchers, journalists and faith organisations, the lesson is that the breakdown by faith matters more than any single total, and these counts should be revisited as each new CESNUR survey refines the map of religious minorities in Italy. For now, the headline is easy to state: Italy remains a Catholic country by identity, but beneath that label lies a small, diverse and steadily growing patchwork of faiths that is quietly redrawing its religious map.

Frequently Asked Questions: Religious Minorities in Italy