A record number of Czechs married foreigners last year

A record number of Czechs found a bride or groom from abroad last year: 6,723 people married a partner from a different country, the most since 1995. In a time-honored manner, the largest number consisted of Czech-Slovak couples; 2,089 of them exchanged vows last year, with a slightly higher number of Slovak brides than Slovak grooms.

After that, however, preferences change. While women most often married Germans and Britons, among men, Ukrainian and Russian brides predominated and were the most numerous in the last three decades.

Last year, according to statistics from the Czech Statistical Office (ČSÚ), 521 Czech men married a partner from Ukraine, making this nationality the second-most common among foreign brides. Compared to 2021, however, their number decreased by several dozen.

The war in Ukraine brought an increase in the number of marriages between Czechs and foreign women from the Russian side. There were 254 of them last year, the most since 1997 when 214 Czech-Russian couples got married.

Lucie Ditrychová from the Center for the Integration of Foreigners confirms that the trend from last year can be connected to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its other consequences. "Citizens of Russia may have an increased interest in ensuring the possibility of staying in the EU," she told news site iDnes, adding that marriage to an EU citizen was one option.

Lenka Jelínková from the Department of Registers of Prague 1, said that so far this year the Russian Embassy has not fully assisted Russian citizens. "Therefore, citizens of Russia have a much greater problem with obtaining marriage documents," she points out.

Men in the Czech Republic most often get married between the ages of 30 and 34, while brides usually marry between the ages of 25 and 29. According to ČSÚ statistics, 54,500 couples got married last year, which was 17 percent more than a year earlier. Some 19,300 marriages ended in divorce last year, a year-on-year decrease of 1,800. Marriages with foreigners made up 12.3 percent of all unions.