This is new.
When I started this blog, I intended to document my journey repairing iPhones and other tech. Then I pivoted to photography. This might be another pivot – or just a glitch in the matrix.
When I reviewed my MacBook Pro after 18 months of use, I mentioned using it for Excel, among other things. True, but only to a limited extent – I’d done nothing more than maintain a few expense sheets. Nothing heavy. I wanted to change that.
So this is my first article on data and Excel. I’ll share what I did, how I did it, and why.
Let’s start with why. I’m a Latvian living abroad. A couple of years ago, after countless attempts, I landed a job with my current employer – and joined the ranks of the few thousand Latvians living outside Latvia. But just how many of us are there? Which country hosts the most? How many Latvian nationals live in other EU countries? Europeans, Latvians included, are free to live, work, and study anywhere in the EU – so how are we spread across the bloc, and beyond it?
I wanted to know which countries have at least 1,000 Latvian residents, and which have between 100 and 1,000. I also wanted to compare the picture from when I left Latvia (August 2022) to today (July 2026). Have the numbers shifted? Let’s find out.
Using AI to help modify the data
I sourced the data from Latvia’s open data portal – a public repository where anyone can access a wide range of datasets. After downloading the file (a .csv, to be precise), I noticed the country names were all in Latvian. I opened Claude and had it translate all 151 country names into English. I then asked it to add a continent column and a column indicating EU membership for European countries. What would have taken considerable manual effort was done in moments.
After that, I converted the data range into a table and got to work building charts. Simple as that.
Everything begins with August 2022
In August 2022, the year I arrived in Belgium, there were 223,285 Latvians with a registered address abroad. In Belgium specifically, that figure stood at 1,786. This is perhaps unsurprising – Brussels is not only Belgium’s capital but also the home of most EU institutions, so it’s reasonable to assume that a good share of those compatriots work for an EU institution, or are family members of someone who does. The other major seat of EU institutions is Luxembourg City, which hosted 530 Latvians – roughly a third of Belgium’s figure.
As mentioned, EU citizens are free to live, work, and study in any Member State. Here is the breakdown of Latvians registered across other EU Member States.
As the table shows, Germany and Ireland each host more than four times as many Latvians as the next country on the list, Sweden. Neighbouring countries Estonia and Lithuania registered 2,813 and 887, respectively.
That gives us a clear picture of how Latvians are distributed across the EU. Now let’s look at countries outside the European Union with 1,000 or more registered Latvians – and there is one obvious outlier.
For those wondering why the United Kingdom has almost 90,000 Latvians, it largely comes down to the 2008–2009 financial crisis. Latvia’s response was one of the most severe austerity programmes in Europe, and many Latvians left mostly for the UK and Ireland in search of better economic prospects. It helps that the UK was still an EU Member State at the time, meaning Latvians could move freely. It is also worth noting that the total number of Latvians living abroad was even higher in the years immediately after the crisis – though I don’t have access to the precise figures.
Moving on. The open data table covers 223,285 Latvians registered across 151 countries. We’ve looked at countries with at least 1,000 Latvians; now let’s turn to those with between 100 and 999.
Interesting, right? China has 105 registered Latvians, Venezuela 300, New Zealand 306. Fascinating – or at least I find it so. I’ll spare you the full list of countries with at least one.
So that was July 2022. What about today?
What has changed by July 2026?
Quite a lot, as it turns out.
The 2026 dataset adds 14 new countries: Antigua and Barbuda, American Samoa, Bangladesh, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Democratic Republic of Congo, Fiji, Laos, El Salvador, Seychelles, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Somalia, Suriname, and Vanuatu – bringing the total to 162 countries. The number of Latvians registered abroad has risen to 262,500, a 17.6% increase on 2022.
Turning to EU countries, the sharpest growth between August 2022 and July 2026 was recorded in Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Portugal, while Estonia, Ireland, and France saw the smallest increases. See the table below for the full breakdown.
Interesting, isn’t it?
Now let’s look at non-EU countries with 1,000 or more registered Latvians. The biggest surprise? Brazil, where registrations more than doubled – a 100%+ increase – followed by Switzerland and Norway. At the top of the list sits the United Kingdom, with over 100,000 registered Latvians, a 15% increase since 2022.
Looking at countries with between 100 and 999 registered Latvians, three things stand out. First, the United Arab Emirates recorded the sharpest growth in registrations, at 181%. Second, three countries that sat below 100 in 2022 have since crossed that threshold – Georgia, Japan, and Chile – with Guernsey, the second-largest of the Channel Islands, joining them as a fourth. Third, for the first time we see decreases – Venezuela and Anguilla both recorded fewer registrations than in 2022.
Conclusion
So is this the complete picture? While every Latvian is legally required to notify the authorities when changing their country of residence, not everyone does – some aren’t aware of the obligation, some forget, and others simply prefer not to. I’m not suggesting the gap between registered and unregistered emigrants is large, but it’s likely more than marginal. That is why some sources put the figure closer to 450,000 rather than the 262,500 recorded here. The data reflects only those who formally registered their address in a given country.
One last number worth mentioning: 72 Latvians are registered in Monaco. Not bad, given what it costs to live there.
I hope you found this as interesting to read as it was to compile. I did consider going deeper – breaking the numbers down by continent, for instance – but that felt like overkill for a post that will probably have two or three readers.
If you’ve made it this far, I hope this has shown how AI tools can eliminate a lot of manual work. The 2026 data required a full update – something that would have taken a couple of hours without AI assistance.
If you spot an error or think I’ve misinterpreted something, do let me know. And stay tuned for more.
Good luck.
Kindly,
Olaaf
