Who belongs to which religion, and who to none, in 201 countries and in every neighbourhood of England and Wales, with Scotland and Northern Ireland alongside. A decade of change around the world, a generation of change at home, and 1,624,818 places of worship that volunteers have put on the map.
Religion is one of the oldest ways people have of saying who they are, and one of the hardest things to count. A census can only ask; a survey can only sample; a map of churches, mosques and temples only shows where someone has bothered to draw them. Put the best of these sources side by side, though, and a picture emerges of a world that is changing faster than many of us notice: in where the faithful live, in who says they have no religion at all, and, closer to home, in how differently the generations answer the same question.
This page draws on three kinds of open data. Pew Research Center's estimates give the religious make-up of 201 countries and territories in 2010 and 2020, in seven groups: Christians, Muslims, the religiously unaffiliated, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and other religions. The censuses of England and Wales (2011 and 2021), Scotland (2022) and Northern Ireland (2021, with a series back to 1861) give the UK in fine detail. And OpenStreetMap's volunteers have tagged 1,624,818 places of worship. Choose the world or the UK, pick a religion, and click any country, council or neighbourhood.
In 2020, by Pew's estimates, 28.8% of the world's 7.89 billion people were Christians (2.27 billion), 25.6% Muslims (2.02 billion), 24.2% religiously unaffiliated (1.91 billion) and 14.9% Hindus (1.18 billion). Buddhists made up 4.1%, Jews 0.2% and all other religions together, from Sikhs and Baha'is to Shinto, Daoism and folk religions, 2.2%.
The world's religious make-up, 2010 and 2020
Share of the world's population. Pale bar 2010, solid bar 2020. Pew Research Center estimates for 201 countries and territories.
Christianity is the largest group in 123 countries and territories, Islam in 54, and the unaffiliated in 11, among them China, Japan, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, and by 2020 Uruguay and New Zealand. Buddhists are the largest group in 8 places, from Sri Lanka to Mongolia, Hindus in 3 (India, Nepal and Mauritius), Jews in one (Israel) and other religions in one (Taiwan). The unaffiliated are concentrated to a remarkable degree: China alone is home to 67% of them.
Between 2010 and 2020 the world's population grew by 12.3%. The number of Muslims grew fastest, by 20.7% (347 million more people), and their share of the world rose from 23.9% to 25.6%. The religiously unaffiliated grew by 16.5%, Hindus by 12.0% and Christians by 5.7%, so the Christian share of the world fell from 30.6% to 28.8%. Buddhists were the only group to shrink in number, by 5.4%, with the biggest falls in their share in South Korea, Japan and Vietnam.
Christianity's centre of gravity also moved. In 2010 Europe was home to 25.8% of the world's Christians and sub-Saharan Africa to 24.8%. By 2020 the African share had risen to 30.7% (697 million people) and the European share had fallen to 22.3% (505 million).
Where the world's Christians live
Share of all Christians in each region. Pale bar 2010, solid bar 2020.
At the same time, the share of Christians fell in 127 of the 201 countries and territories, and the share with no religion rose in 103. The biggest shifts came in the English-speaking world and the southern cone of South America: the unaffiliated share rose by 17.5 points in Australia, 16.7 in Chile, 16.1 in Uruguay and 13.3 in the United States. In Uruguay and New Zealand the unaffiliated became the largest group.
The biggest rises in the share with no religion
Change in the religiously unaffiliated share, 2010 to 2020, percentage points. Hover for both years.
Pew also scores each country's religious diversity on a scale of 0 to 10, from a population that belongs entirely to one group to one spread evenly across all seven. The world as a whole scores 9.0, but most countries are much less mixed: 41 rate as very low and only 8 as very high. Singapore tops the list (9.3), with Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, people of other religions and people of no religion each making up at least 5% of the population, followed by Suriname, Taiwan, South Korea and Mauritius.
The most religiously diverse countries, 2020
Pew Religious Diversity Index, 0 to 10. Bars split by each group's share of the population.
Censuses and surveys count people. OpenStreetMap counts buildings, or rather the places of worship its volunteers have mapped: 1,624,818 of them worldwide, 989,563 tagged Christian, 291,813 Muslim, 111,463 Buddhist, 56,870 Hindu and 41,061 Shinto (99.4% of them in Japan), with 7,527 synagogues and 1,970 gurdwaras. Turn them on in the map's layers panel and you see the shape of religious landscapes: the parish churches of Europe, the mosques of Indonesia and Turkey, the Hindu temples of India and Nepal, the Buddhist temples of Myanmar and Thailand and the shrines of Japan.
Christian places of worship by tagged denomination
Share of OpenStreetMap's Christian places of worship that carry a denomination tag, by Pew region. Only 64% carry one.
Where a denomination is tagged, the regions look very different. Catholic places make up 63% of tagged churches in Europe and 61% in Latin America and the Caribbean, where Pentecostal (10%) and evangelical churches come next. In North America Baptist churches lead (33%), then Catholic and Methodist. In sub-Saharan Africa the largest tagged group is Orthodox, almost all of it Ethiopia's churches, ahead of Catholic and Pentecostal.
How thoroughly each region is mapped
Places of worship in OpenStreetMap per 100,000 people, by Pew region (2020 population).
That second chart is the warning label. North America has 77.5 mapped places of worship per 100,000 people and Europe 69.9; sub-Saharan Africa, where most of the world's Christian growth is happening, has 7.1. That is not because Africa has fewer churches and mosques but because fewer of them have been mapped, and many gather in homes, schools and halls that will never be tagged as places of worship. Read the layer as a map of where people have drawn buildings, not of where people pray.
Each UK nation asks about religion in its own way. England and Wales ask "What is your religion?"; Scotland asks "What religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?" and lists the Church of Scotland and Roman Catholic separately; Northern Ireland asks about current religion and then about the religion a person was brought up in. Scotland's census was a year later, in 2022. I have put the answers into common groups (no religion, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Jewish, Buddhist, other religion, not stated), as shares of everyone counted, but the differences in wording matter, and Northern Ireland's published tables do not separate the smaller faiths.
Religion in the four nations
Share of all usual residents. England and Wales 2021, Scotland 2022, Northern Ireland 2021. In Northern Ireland, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Jewish and Buddhist are within other religion.
In England and Wales, Christian is still the largest single answer, 46.2% against 37.2% for no religion, but it is no longer a majority: in 2011 the figures were 59.3% and 25.1%. In Wales, no religion is now the largest answer (46.5% to 43.6%). In Scotland it is a majority, 51.1%, with 20.4% Church of Scotland and 13.3% Roman Catholic. Northern Ireland remains the most Christian part of the UK (79.7%), though 17.4% said they had no religion. Muslims are the second largest religious group in England and Wales (6.5%, up from 4.8%), followed by Hindus (1.7%) and Sikhs (0.9%).
Council by council, no religion is now the most common answer in 75 of the UK's 361 local authorities: 25 of Scotland's 32 council areas, 11 of Wales's 22 and 39 in England. On the same comparison in 2011, it was the most common answer in 0 of the councils of England and Wales. The Christian share fell in every one of them (318 of 318), most of all in the North East and Yorkshire: by -17.6 points in South Tyneside. It fell least in diverse London boroughs such as Harrow and Brent.
England and Wales, 2011 and 2021
Share of all usual residents. Pale bar 2011, solid bar 2021.
The neighbourhood map shows how local the picture is. Among the 7,264 neighbourhoods (middle layer super output areas, of about 8,000 people each) of England and Wales, no religion is the most common answer in 1,599, led by central Brighton and Hove, where up to 68% said so. Christian is a majority in 2,772, with the highest shares in parts of Liverpool and Knowsley (up to 76%). Other faiths are concentrated in particular places: Muslims in parts of Birmingham, Blackburn and Bradford (up to 87%), Hindus in Leicester and Brent (up to 73%), Sikhs in Ealing, Wolverhampton and Birmingham (up to 42%), Jewish communities in Salford, Bury and north London (up to 57%), and Buddhists around Aldershot in Rushmoor (up to 10%).
The detailed answers in England and Wales add texture: 73,738 people wrote Pagan, 25,671 Alevi, 25,004 Jain, 12,820 Wicca and 9,583 Ravidassia; among people of no religion, 32,104 wrote agnostic and 13,838 atheist.
The biggest divide in the census is not between places but between ages. In England and Wales, 77% of people aged 75 and over said they were Christian and 14% said they had no religion. Among 25 to 34 year olds the figures were almost reversed: 31% Christian and 51% no religion. The two lines cross among people in their late thirties and forties. Children's answers were usually given by a parent. The Muslim share is highest among the young: 10.9% of under 16s, against 1.4% of people aged 75 and over.
Religion by age, England and Wales, 2021
Share of each age group answering Christian, no religion or Muslim.
Among people aged 75 and over in England and Wales, 77% said they were Christian. Among 25 to 34 year olds, 51% said they had no religion.
Northern Ireland's statistics agency has published religion from every census since 1861, for the area that became Northern Ireland. In 1861, 40.9% of people were Catholic and 57.7% belonged to the three largest Protestant churches (Presbyterian, Church of Ireland and Methodist). The Protestant share peaked at 62.2% in 1926; the Catholic share fell to 28.0% in 1981, a census marked by a campaign of non-cooperation and a high number of people not stating a religion. Since 2001 Catholics have outnumbered the three main Protestant churches combined, and in 2021 the figures were 42.3% and 30.5%, with 19.0% giving no religion or not stating one.
Religion in Northern Ireland, 1861 to 2021
Share of usual residents by current religion. 'Other' includes smaller Protestant and other Christian denominations as well as other religions.
Counting by religion brought up in as well as current religion, the census gives the wider community background: 45.7% Catholic, 43.5% Protestant and other Christian, 1.5% other religions and 9.3% none. On that measure, too, Catholic background is now the larger.
The world. Pew Research Center's 'Religious Composition 2010 to 2020' dataset gives, for 201 countries and territories with at least 100,000 people, the estimated number and share of Christians, Muslims, religiously unaffiliated people, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and people of other religions in 2010 and 2020, built from more than 2,700 censuses, surveys and registers, and a diversity index. I use Pew's percentages and its rounded counts, as it recommends. Countries are joined to Natural Earth outlines by their UN codes; French overseas departments are drawn as part of France, Somaliland with Somalia's figures, and Northern Cyprus without data.
The UK. England and Wales: census 2021 tables TS030 (religion, for every local authority and middle layer super output area) and TS031 (detailed religion), and 2011 table KS209EW, from Nomis. 2011 districts are added together into the 2023 councils they merged into. Scotland: census 2022 table UV205 (National Records of Scotland), with the Church of Scotland, Roman Catholic and other Christian added together as Christian and Pagan included in other religion. Northern Ireland: census 2021 tables MS-B19, MS-B23 and MS-B22 (NISRA). Shares are of all usual residents, including people who did not answer. The question on religion is voluntary in all three censuses. Religion by age comes from table RM118; its age labels were blank in the download, so I identified the bands from their population totals.
Places of worship. Every OpenStreetMap feature tagged amenity=place_of_worship, counted per quarter degree square by its religion and denomination tags, and placed in a country by the centre of its square. Denomination tags are grouped into families (Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed and Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal and others). Only 64% of Christian places carry a denomination tag and 6.5% of all places have no religion tag at all.
What this is not. Belonging is not the same as believing or practising, and none of these sources measures faith, attendance or devotion. Pew's figures are estimates, often projected from older censuses and surveys. Census answers depend on the wording of the question, and many people who tick a box seldom attend a service, while others who say "no religion" pray. The page describes and does not rank or judge any religion or none. The colours are chosen only to tell groups apart.