Millions of students leave home to study each year, and most countries have one favourite destination. I coloured every country by where its own students most often go abroad, year by year from 1999 to 2023. Press play and watch the old empires hold on, the language blocs stick together, and new magnets such as Turkey, South Korea and Malaysia pull students in.
Ask a student in Lagos, Almaty or Dakar where they would go to study abroad and you will often hear the same answer as their neighbours. Nigerians go to Britain, Kazakhs to Russia, Senegalese to France. The reasons are old: a shared language, a shared history, a shared exam system, and family who went before. But the map is not frozen. Over 24 years some of the biggest flows in the world have shifted, and a few countries that sent students away now pull them in.
The source is the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, which collects from each country the number of internationally mobile students in its universities and, for most countries, where they come from. Read the other way round, the same table tells you where each country's students go. In 2023 it covers 6,234,900 students in 114 host countries. Some important hosts do not say where their students come from (China, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore), so the map can only rank destinations that do. I flag that wherever it could change the answer.
In 2023 the United States is still the most common number one, chosen by 38 countries, followed by the United Kingdom (28), France (16), Australia (15) and Germany (11). In 1999 the United States led 76 countries. Part of that fall is real and part comes from gaps in the early data: Germany did not report its students by origin to UNESCO until 2013, and its absence flatters the United States. Comparing only countries measured cleanly in both years, the United States was number one for 39 of 165 countries in 2013 and 33 in 2023.
Pick a country on the map or below. Leaving shows where its students study abroad; arriving shows where the students in its own universities come from. The year follows the slider above. Hollow points on the lines are years filled in between reported years.
The strongest patterns on the map are older than any of the students in them. French-speaking Africa looks to France, Portuguese-speaking Africa to Portugal, Central Asia to Russia, and much of English-speaking Africa to Britain or South Africa. Each of these routes has held for the whole period, but most have loosened.
Share of each group's students abroad who study in the old centre
Students counted abroad from each group of countries, share in one host; lines are unbroken where hosts are filled between reported years
In 1999, 57% of students abroad from French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa were in France; by 2023 it was 29%, as Senegal, Morocco, Canada and Turkey took a growing share. Senegal itself is now the number one destination for 3 of its neighbours. The pull of Paris on Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia fell from 70% to 50%. Russia held its grip on Central Asia: 52% of Central Asian students abroad were in Russia in 2023, and it is number one for all five countries. Portugal still takes 61% of students from Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé. (The dip in that line from 2008 is not real movement: Portugal changed how it counted, and its reported total fell from 17,950 in 2007 to 8,102 in 2008.) English-speaking Africa is the one group that moved towards its old centre: Britain's share rose from 24% to 33%, as Nigerians poured into British universities after 2020.
International students in some fast-growing hosts
Inbound internationally mobile students (UNESCO totals, which exist even where the breakdown by origin does not)
Turkey is the biggest new magnet: 18,166 international students in 2005, 301,634 in 2023. Its students come from its neighbours and its language family: Syria (58,210), Azerbaijan (34,247), Iran (22,632) and Turkmenistan (18,250). Turkey is now the number one destination for Syria, Azerbaijan and Iran. South Korea grew 8.2 times from 2005, mostly with students from China and Vietnam, and is number one for Mongolia. Malaysia grew 4.5 times from 2006; 40% of its international students came from China in 2023. Russia, already large, reached 336,453.
Two of the largest magnets cannot be put on the main map. The United Arab Emirates reported 237,034 international students in 2023, and China 200,892, but neither says where they come from. If the Emirates were counted it could be number one for some Gulf and Arab countries; I mark those countries as uncertain on the map. China's students come largely from its Asian neighbours and Africa, but the UNESCO data do not let me rank it.
Students abroad from China and India
UNESCO estimate of each country's internationally mobile students studying abroad, all destinations
China has been the world's biggest sender throughout: 137,674 students abroad in 1999, 1,076,015 in 2023. India has grown faster, from 60,252 to 833,835, and its numbers jumped after 2019 while China's flattened. On UNESCO's estimate India has not yet overtaken China worldwide. It has in Britain: in the UNESCO data the UK had more Indian than Chinese students in 2023 (171,871 against 156,481), and HESA's own figures show the same switch in 2022/23. In the United States, China was still ahead in 2023 (266,587 against 223,117) on these data.
HESA publishes, for every UK university and college, its non-UK students by home country. Pick one to see its own map. Counts are rounded by HESA to the nearest five; the years are academic years from 2014/15 to 2024/25.
Across the UK, students from India (146,505) narrowly outnumbered those from China (143,145) in 2024/25, ten years after India sent just 18,420. Nigeria rose to 72,325 in 2022/23 and fell back to 38,010 by 2024/25. Students from the European Union fell after Brexit: France, Italy and Germany all sent fewer in 2024/25 than in 2014/15. Of the 122 providers with at least 1,000 non-UK students in 2024/25, China is the biggest source for 36 and India for 62.
Two independent checks agree well with the UNESCO table. The OECD publishes, for its members and partners, the share of each origin country's mobile students who study in each destination. Across 56,908 matching host, origin and year combinations, the UNESCO-based share is within one percentage point of the OECD share 84% of the time (correlation 0.9089); the larger differences come from the two sources using slightly different totals for the country of origin. For the UK, the UNESCO total for 2022/23 (748,461) is within 1.4% of HESA's own count (758,865).
The table. UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) data, release 20260507-91260335, retrieved through the UIS data API on 2026-10-28: for each host country and year, inbound internationally mobile tertiary students by country of origin (217 origin indicators). "Internationally mobile" means students who crossed a border to study, usually defined by previous education or residence rather than citizenship. Years are UNESCO reference years (the academic year ending in that year).
Gaps. Many hosts skip years. A host-year counts as reported when its students by origin add up to at least 30% of its total; a missing year between two reported years at most nine years apart is filled by straight-line interpolation, and otherwise the nearest reported year within two years is carried over. Of the 213,434 host, origin and year rows used, 22,353 are interpolated and 12,087 carried. The United States is filled between 1999 and 2005 and between 2005 and 2013. Nothing else is estimated.
Uncertain countries. Some hosts report a total but not the origins, or stop reporting for long spells (Germany before 2013, Japan from 2000 to 2012, Argentina from 2001 to 2015, the United Arab Emirates after 2012). For each such host and year I take its nearest reported breakdown, scaled by the change in its total where known, and if that could reach 70% of the counted number one, the country is drawn with a dashed outline and named as uncertain. That flags 22 countries in 2023 and 52 in 1999. China, Singapore and Lebanon never report origins and cannot be tested this way.
Japan reports only part of its students by origin from 2015 (not those from China or South Korea), so its counts are a lower bound. Countries with fewer than 50 students counted abroad are left grey. Small countries' answers can swing on a handful of students.
International student mobility: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), UIS Data API (https://api.uis.unesco.org), release 20260507-91260335, extracted 2026-10-28; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Check: OECD Education at a Glance database, Data Explorer (sdmx.oecd.org), share of mobile students by destination, extracted 2026-10-28; CC BY 4.0. UK providers: HESA Open data, Table 28, Non-UK permanent address students by HE provider and country of permanent address, 2014/15 to 2024/25 (https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/table-28), extracted 2026-10-28; CC BY 4.0; country names from ONS (OGL v3). University locations: Wikidata (CC0). Country outlines: Natural Earth 1:50m (public domain). Place names: GeoNames cities15000 (CC BY 4.0). Hill shading: AWS Terrain Tiles (Mapzen terrarium). Optional base maps: Tiles © Esri.