Ireland’s 2026 in numbers: prices, people, homes and jobs in charts

A snapshot of Ireland in 2026 from the latest official figures: population, jobs, inflation, rents, house prices, new homes, migration and births, each set against 2025.

Prices in Ireland rose by 4.1% in the 12 months to September 2026. That is the highest inflation rate the Central Statistics Office (CSO) has recorded since January 2024. A year earlier, in September 2025, the rate was 2.7%.

This page is a quick check on the country in 2026. Each section takes one measure, shows the latest official figure, and sets it against 2025. Several topics have their own, longer articles on The Irish Wire.

Population: still growing, but more slowly

There were 5,525,600 people in Ireland in April 2026, the CSO estimates. That is 66,900 more than in April 2025, a smaller rise than the 78,300 of the year before. The CSO release has the full breakdown.

Jobs: more people at work, unemployment edges up

The Labour Force Survey counted 2,839,300 people in work in April to June 2026. That is 21,200 more than a year earlier. The unemployment rate has crept up a little, from 4.9% in September 2025 to 5.0% in September 2026.

The employment rate, the share of people aged 15 to 64 who have a job, slipped from 74.7% to 74.3% over the same year. That can happen when the population grows faster than the number of jobs.

"Seasonally adjusted" means the CSO has removed normal patterns, such as summer jobs, so that one month can be fairly compared with the next. The CSO estimates that 149,500 people were unemployed in September 2026.

Inflation: prices are rising faster than in 2025

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is the official measure of price changes in the shops and in household bills. Its annual rate stayed under 3% for most of late 2025. It jumped to 3.6% in March 2026 and reached 4.1% by September 2026.

The EU uses a slightly different measure, the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP), to compare countries. On that measure, Irish prices rose by 3.8% in the year to September 2026. Between August and September 2026 alone, prices rose by 0.2%.

Rents: new tenancies up 9.1% in a year

The average rent on a new tenancy was €1,839 a month in the first three months of 2026. That is 9.1% more than a year earlier, according to the RTB Rent Index. In Q1 2025, the yearly rise was 5.5%.

People already renting pay less. The average rent on an existing tenancy was €1,513 a month, up 4.2% in a year. Our article on rents by county has the local picture.

House prices: still rising, but more slowly

Home prices rose by 5.1% in the 12 months to August 2026, down from a 7.4% rise a year earlier. Prices rose faster outside Dublin (6.2%) than in Dublin (3.9%). The median price paid for a home was €400,000, up from €375,000.

Buyers filed 4,279 home purchases with Revenue in August 2026, worth €1.95 billion in total. That was 2.5% more purchases than in August 2025.

New homes: a strong 2025, a mixed 2026

Builders finished 36,215 new homes in 2025, the most in the CSO series that starts in 2011. In the first half of 2026, 16,679 homes were completed. That is more than in the same months of 2025, although April to June 2026 was 3.6% lower than a year earlier.

Most new homes are in housing schemes. Of the 8,823 homes finished in April to June 2026, 4,738 were scheme houses, 2,658 were apartments and 1,427 were one-off single houses.

Migration: fewer people arriving

In the year to April 2026, 110,600 people moved to Ireland. That is down from 125,300 the year before and 149,200 in 2024. The number leaving also fell, to 62,500.

Net migration is arrivals minus departures. It was 48,100 in the year to April 2026, the lowest since 2021. Our migration map shows where people come from.

Births: steady at about 54,000 a year

There were 54,125 births registered in 2025, almost the same as the 54,062 in 2024. Ten years earlier, in 2015, there were 65,909. The birth rate has fallen from 14.1 to 9.9 births for every 1,000 people.

There were 35,587 deaths registered in 2025, up from 35,173 in 2024. Births still outnumber deaths: in the year to April 2026, natural increase (births minus deaths) added 18,800 people. First-time mothers were 31.8 years old on average.