Switzerland is voting on whether to cap its population at 10 million. Here's what to know
A photo shows a poster depicting U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping and reading “Breaking with Europe now of all times? NO on the SVP-Chaos-Initiative” in Thayngen, northern Switzerland, on June 1, 2026.
Sebastien Bozon | Afp | Getty Images
Switzerland, a wealthy country that has historically embraced free movement and foreign investment, is about to vote on whether to cap its population — and restrict immigration measures to do so.
Sunday’s referendum comes after the country’s population increased 10% in the 10 years up to the end of 2025, when it stood at just over 9.1 million. For the first time, the country had more people over 65 than under 20. Net migration and the birth rate fell last year.
Relatively low taxation has helped make Switzerland home to global conglomerates like consumer goods giant Nestle, pharmaceutical heavyweight Novartis and other multinational firms in finance, luxury goods and tech. It has one of the world’s highest concentrations of billionaires and a much stronger GDP per capita rate than many other developed economies.
At the end of 2024, 41% of the population had a “migration background,” a term applied to immigrants and their Swiss-born children, per official data, which also shows 32.5% of the country’s permanent residents are first-generation immigrants. An estimated 1.4 million EU citizens live in Switzerland, comprising around 16% of the country’s population. Another 340,000 EU citizens cross the border daily to work there.
A recent poll found that 52% of respondents would reject the population cap, while 45% were in favor.
How would the population cap work?
But if voters back the population curb proposal, the country’s Federal Council and parliament will have to roll out measures to curb population growth until 2050.
Immigration systems would be tightened if the population exceeded 9.5 million at any point over the next 24 years, with asylum and family reunification programs first in line to face cuts. Switzerland’s freedom of movement initiative with the European Union would also potentially end, should the population rise above the 10-million threshold.
Switzerland is part of the border-free Schengen travel zone, along with many large EU economies. The bloc and the country also have an agreement to allow free movement of each other’s citizens, allowing them to live and work in each other’s territories, provided they have a job or another source of income.
Switzerland’s right-wing SVP party is urging voters to “send a clear signal” to policymakers to curb what it calls “overwhelming” population growth.
In a statement last week, the SVP said that voting for the population cap would still allow 40,000 people to move to Switzerland each year, but lawmaker Piero Marchesi said population growth had caused problems for public services, wages, the price of rent, education and the labor market.
Companies headquartered in Switzerland have argued that putting significant caps on immigration would dent the country’s competitive edge and weigh on its struggling economy, which has faced sluggish growth, a surging currency, disinflation and U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff regime.
Economiesuisse — a trade body that counts Amazon Web Services, Roche, Google and Johnson & Johnson among its 100,000 members — has opposed the population cap initiative.
Chief Economist Rudolf Minsch said in an emailed statement to CNBC that Switzerland’s prosperity depends on “openness, innovation and strong economic relations with Europe.”
“We understand that concerns about housing, infrastructure and population growth must be taken seriously, and these challenges require pragmatic political solutions,” he said.
“Rigid immigration caps are not the right answer, particularly if they risk undermining the bilateral agreements with the European Union, which are of central importance to the Swiss economy.”
Minsch added that Switzerland’s reliance on highly qualified foreign workers, especially in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, technology and healthcare.
“Major restrictions on immigration would weaken innovation, growth and competitiveness, while making it harder for companies to attract international talent,” he said.
Speaking to CNBC’s Carolin Roth at the Swiss Economic Forum last week, Nestle CEO Philipp Navratil described how attractive the country was to outside investors, adding: “It is important that these conditions in Switzerland are maintained.”
“We must not take this for granted; it was created through a lot of hard work and through a willingness to drive reforms,” he added.
He said his company had nine factories, three research centers in the country, and “our main share of research and development still takes place in Switzerland — this has been the case for 160 years.”
“Reliability is found in Switzerland, because quality exists in Switzerland, because talent exists in Switzerland, because Switzerland has created and established framework conditions that are simply attractive for a global company,” he added.
Representatives of the Swiss People’s Party next to a banner reading in German: ‘No 10 million Switzerland! sustainability initiative’ in Bern on April 3, 2024.
Fabrice Coffrini | Afp | Getty Images
At the same conference, UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti said he worried about “extreme initiatives.”
“Switzerland has 30% of foreign-born people, almost like in Australia, twice as Germany,” he said. “And that leads to certain frustration within society. But it’s not a way to solve the problem.”
UBS is one of Switzerland’s biggest employers, with around 33,500 of its employees based in the country.
Joao B. Duarte, a professor of economics at Portugal’s Nova School of Business and Economics, told CNBC in an email that a population cap could damage Switzerland’s credibility in various ways.
“If firms believe access to European labor may become more uncertain, investment decisions can shift well before the legal trigger is reached,” he told CNBC.
Duarte said the U.K.’s exit from the EU “offers a useful warning. Ending free movement did not create a smooth transition to domestic labor self-sufficiency. It created shortages, recruitment frictions and higher costs in sectors that had relied on flexible EU workers.”
He added that the EU is Switzerland’s main trading partner, and free movement is tied to the broader bilateral framework that gives Swiss firms privileged access to European markets.
“If a ‘yes’ vote eventually forces Switzerland to terminate the free movement agreement, the strain would not be limited to migration policy. It could spill over into the entire Swiss-EU economic relationship,” Duarte said.
— CNBC’s Carolin Roth contributed to this report.
