Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
UK citizenship applications hit a record high at the end of 2025 after Reform UK set out plans to strip overseas nationals of their right to remain permanently if it wins power at the next election.
There was a particularly sharp rise in applications from US nationals, amid an increasingly febrile political climate in America under the presidency of Donald Trump.
Total applications for British citizenship reached 90,555 in the final quarter of 2025, a rise of 44 per cent on the previous quarter and the highest figure since records began in 2004.
Despite the rise in applications, grants of both settlement and citizenship fell during 2025, compared with the previous year, by 10 per cent and 13 per cent respectively, the Home Office noted.
The increase came as Britain’s main political parties vied with each other to set out tough policies that could threaten migrants’ ability to stay in the UK — even affecting those who hold indefinite leave to remain (ILR), which confers the right to live and work in the country permanently.
At the Labour Party conference in September, home secretary Shabana Mahmood set out plans that would double the default period migrants must live in the UK before qualifying to settle permanently, with tough new criteria for language proficiency and contributions to the public finances.
Policies set out by Reform in September — which has been leading in opinion polls for much of the last year — would go even further, unpicking the legal status of people who already hold ILR and forcing them to apply for renewable five-year visas.
Nicolas Rollason, partner at the law firm Kingsley Napley, said concerns over both Labour’s settlement proposals and Reform’s possible attacks on ILR were “pushing people who qualify to apply now”, including some who had held ILR for years and previously felt no need to become a British citizen.
Part of the increase is also due to a jump in applications from EU nationals who gained settled status under arrangements put in place before Brexit.
However, lawyers say interest in citizenship has been especially strong among US professionals seeking refuge from political instability since Trump’s return to the White House — and able to take advantage of a 2022 change that allows Americans with a British grandmother to apply.
There were 8,790 US applications for British citizenship in the year ending December 2025, a rise of 42 per cent from the previous year.
Citizenship applications also increased markedly across the three largest groups of applicants, rising by 55 per cent for Indians, 28 per cent for Pakistanis and 84 per cent for Italians between the third and fourth quarters of 2025.
The number of people sitting citizenship tests also jumped 48 per cent in the fourth quarter, reaching a record high of 59,472, suggesting numbers applying for citizenship will continue to grow.
Kelvin Tanner, a partner at Charles Russell Speechlys, said the law firm was seeing increased interest in applying for both settlement and British citizenship “as a hedge against continually changing immigration policy and both UK and global political uncertainty”.
This included many people already living in Britain with settled status, who had not previously considered citizenship but were applying as “insurance” against a future Reform government, among other uncertainties.