Bosnia records 10,498 more deaths than births in 2025
Natural population change was negative in 129 of 143 municipalities, and in percentage terms Republika Srpska is shrinking almost twice as fast as the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Bosnia and Herzegovina lost 10,498 more people to death than it gained through birth over the course of 2025, and only 14 of its 143 municipalities and cities ended the year with more newborns than funerals. The figures matter in Belgrade for one reason above all: the fastest relative decline is in Republika Srpska, the entity with which Serbia maintains its closest institutional ties in the region.
There is no single national vital statistics release in Bosnia, so a country-wide picture only emerges once the two entity statistics offices and Brcko are added together. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with an estimated 2.13 million residents, closed the year at minus 5,279, or 0.248 percent of its population. Republika Srpska, with roughly 1.1 million residents, posted an almost identical absolute figure of minus 5,079, but that amounts to 0.462 percent of everyone living there. Brcko District, home to 80,371 people, was down 140, or 0.17 percent.
Republika Srpska drops below 9,000 births for the first time
The Republika Srpska Institute of Statistics reports that 8,825 children were born in the entity during 2025, 402 fewer than a year earlier, while 13,904 people died, 232 fewer than in 2024. The rate of natural change stood at minus 4.6 per thousand, and the birth count fell under nine thousand for the first time on record.
In 61 of the entity’s 64 municipalities and cities, deaths outnumbered births. The three exceptions show how thin the surplus is. Jezero finished the year at plus four, with thirteen births against nine deaths, while Kupres and Istocni Drvar each managed exactly one more baby than burial.
Where Bosnians are still being born faster than they die
The 14 municipalities in positive territory cluster in two places, the ring around Sarajevo and western Herzegovina, with a handful of outliers in central Bosnia:
- Ilidza, plus 151, the largest absolute surplus in the country
- Siroki Brijeg, plus 110
- Ilijas, plus 82
- Posusje, plus 54
- Tesanj, plus 48
- Buzim, plus 42
- Vogosca, plus 36
- Hadzici, plus 24
- Grude, plus 13
- Doboj Jug, plus 11
- Kakanj, plus 6
- Jezero, plus 4
- Kupres and Istocni Drvar, plus 1 each
At the other end sit the cities with the deepest absolute losses: Tuzla at minus 517, Bijeljina at minus 395, Prijedor at minus 372, Doboj at minus 333 and Gradiska at minus 321. Grouped by wider area, the Banja Luka region was down 1,302 people, the Doboj region 1,290 and Tuzla Canton 1,267.
Measured against population size rather than in raw numbers, the picture sharpens. Donji Zabar shed 5.93 percent of its residents in a single year, Foca Ustikolina 1.41 percent and Ljubinje 1.41 percent, the three places where the annual loss exceeds one percent of everyone who lives there.
Why is Republika Srpska sinking faster than the Federation?
The answer lies in how long the trend has run and in who is left to have children. Natural population change in Republika Srpska has been negative without interruption since 2002, twenty-four consecutive years, which means each new cohort of potential mothers is smaller than the one before it. Demographer Aleksandar Majic points to that shrinking base of women of childbearing age as the main driver, meaning birth numbers would keep falling even if fertility rates held perfectly steady.
The Federation carries a slightly larger absolute deficit but nearly twice the population, so the percentage blow lands softer. The Sarajevo ring is the only part of the country where four neighbouring municipalities, Ilidza, Ilijas, Vogosca and Hadzici, are simultaneously in surplus, and together they account for 293 people, more than half of the entire national surplus.
Repeat the 2025 pace unchanged and Bosnia would be short roughly 105,000 people within a decade on births and deaths alone. Emigration sits outside that arithmetic entirely; it is tracked separately as migration balance. The entity institutes publish their next annual reading in a year’s time, covering 2026.
