Switzerland: “No Religion” Has Become the Largest Demographic Group

The Federal Statistical Office (FSO) published a series of data on January 27, 2025, one of the most worrying results of which shows that people without religious affiliation are now the largest group in Switzerland. It increased from 34% in 2022 to 36% in 2023. Catholics, for their part, decreased from 32 to 31% and Protestants from 21 to 19%.
This movement, which was already observable in past years, is likely to accelerate in the years to come. Other results show that almost a third of under-15s had no religious affiliation in 2019 compared to only a quarter in 2014.
Ethnicity plays an important role in these results. Thus, the proportion of people without religious affiliation is lower among the Swiss (29%) than among the Germans (55%), the French (63%), or European nationals as a whole.
On the Protestant side, the Swiss form the largest group (28%), while among Catholics, the highest proportion is held by the Italians (68%) and the Portuguese (67%), compared to 34% for the Swiss. As for people from the Balkans, they are predominantly Muslim (58%) and 2.8% are Swiss.
Around three quarters of the population attend a collective religious service five times a year in a place of worship. In addition to people without religion, the least practicing people belong to Islam: nearly 46% of them said they had not attended any religious service in the year preceding the (OFS) survey, and 13% went at least once a week.
Catholics attend a collective religious service between six times a year (26%) and at least once a month. Among evangelical Protestants, the practice is much more pronounced: 68% attend worship once a week. As for reformed Protestants, the majority (49%) attend church between one and five times a year.
More broadly, regardless of religious affiliation, 87% of those surveyed attend a religious service between one and five times a year for a social purpose, for example on the occasion of a wedding or funeral.
The downward trend in the proportion of Catholics is also seen in Valais, which was once the Catholic canton par excellence. Between 2010 and 2023, the proportion of Catholics there fell from 75.4% to 61.9%. This decrease represents 50,000 people.
The share of Protestants fell from 6.4% to 5%, and that of Muslims almost doubled, from 2.1% to 4.1%. During the same period, people declaring themselves to have no religion increased from 10.3 to 23.7%.
(Sources : cath.ch/OFS – FSSPX.Actualités)
Illustration : ID 76458175 © Prazis | Dreamstime.com