For the first time in 12 years a slight rise religious Dutch people

The falling trend of the number of Dutch people who say they are religiously stagnates. In fact, the number of Dutch people who belong to a ecclesiastical current in 2024 has risen slightly for the first time since 2013 compared to the previous year. The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) reports this on Friday. Whereas in 2023 around 42 percent of the Dutch were counted as a religious group, this number was 44 percent in 2024. In 2010, 55 percent of the Dutch said they were religious.

The number of Dutch people who say they are Catholic or Muslim has remained the same. The increase is mainly in a small rise in the number of people who say they are a member of the Protestant Church or who adheres to another religion. Statistics Netherlands does not specify which religions are falling.

In general: the older, the more religious. For example, the majority of the over-65s say they are religious. Striking: 15 to 18-year-olds are a lot more religious (41 percent) than young people between 18 and 25 (32.4 percent).

The number of Dutch people who visited a religious service at least once a month has remained stable in recent years, around 13 percent. There is, however, a big difference between the religious groups. For example, 12 percent of Catholics regularly visited the church in 2024, while in Protestants a little more than half regularly went on a church visit. Half of the Muslims went to the mosque at least once a month.

God in the Netherlands

VU and Radboud University have recently done comparable research, called ‘God in the Netherlands. ‘ That research, for which around 2,000 Dutch people were interviewed, showed that the number of Dutch church members has fallen over the past ten years. Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012, also seems religious than older generations. For example, 27 percent of the people surveyed considered themselves religious, compared to 22 percent of the generation before. The 2024 study is the sixth edition of ‘God in the Netherlands’, which has been conducted several times since 1966. The full results will be published on April 25.

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