The UK Home Office says the number of Afghans arriving in the country by small boat in the 12 months to June 2026 fell by 37%. Official figures show that Afghans accounted for 13% of all people who reached Britain this way during the period.<\/p>\n
The ministry released the latest migration statistics on Thursday, covering the year to the end of June 2026. The figures show that 33,374 people arrived in Britain by small boat during this period, compared with 43,309 in the same period in 2025.<\/p>\n
According to the UK Home Office, Eritreans made up the largest share of arrivals by this route at 18%. They were followed by Sudanese and Afghans, each at 13%, Somalis at 12%, and Iranians at 11% of the total.<\/p>\n
The ministry added that citizens of Eritrea, Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Iran together accounted for nearly two-thirds of all people who reached Britain by small boat during the period.<\/p>\n
The figures show that 5,875 Eritrean nationals arrived in Britain during the period, down 2% from a year earlier. By contrast, the number of Sudanese rose to 4,191, an increase of 11%.<\/p>\n
The number of Somalis arriving by this route also rose to 3,901, up 76% from the same period last year. Meanwhile, the number of Iranians fell by 15%.<\/p>\n
Overall, 38,086 people arrived in Britain by routes deemed illegal by the UK by the end of June 2026, 22% fewer than in the same period last year. Of these, 88% reached Britain by small boat.<\/p>\n
The UK Home Office stressed that these figures include only recorded cases and that not everyone entering the country by these routes may have been identified and registered. Small boats are one of the main routes used by asylum seekers and migrants crossing the English Channel to Britain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UK figures show Afghan arrivals by small boat fell 37% in a year, with Eritreans making up the largest share.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-migrant-news","category-secondary-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}