Number of foreign residents in Japan hits new high at 3.4% of population

At the end of June, foreign residents in Japan reached a record high of 4.28 million, comprising 3.4 percent of the nation's total population, according to government data released on Friday. This figure marked an increase of approximately 155,000 compared to the end of 2025. Japanese authorities attributed the rise to a combination of population growth and tightened visa regulations in some areas.

The number of foreign nationals entering Japan on business manager visas during the first half of 2026 dropped significantly, with only 635 individuals arriving, representing an 80.9 percent decline from the previous year. This decline was primarily due to the stricter visa requirements implemented in October of the prior year.

When broken down by residential status, permanent residents emerged as the largest group, numbering 961,342, marking a 1.5 percent increase from the end of 2025. Following permanent residents were those under the visa category for engineers, specialists in humanities, and international services, including interpreters, whose numbers rose by 8.5 percent to 516,184. Additionally, the count of student visa holders climbed by 3.2 percent to 479,626.

Specified skilled workers, individuals possessing specialized expertise and skills enabling them to commence work without undergoing training in Japan, totaled 444,256. Among these workers, the number in the highly experienced Type 2 category more than doubled to 18,295 from the end of 2025. The top countries of origin for foreign residents were China, Vietnam, and South Korea, in that order, making up half of the total foreign resident population.

Notably, the numbers of residents from Myanmar and Indonesia also saw significant increases of 15.9 percent and 15.6 percent, respectively, compared to the end of 2025.