Iranians in Germany: a history

Students and political exiles arrived from the 1960s to the 1980s, many active in the Confederation of Iranian Students. Asylum seekers followed in the 1980s and again in the 2010s; first-time applications peaked at 26,426 in 2016 (to verify). Communities grew in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, Berlin and Munich. Four Iranian Kurdish opposition figures were killed at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin in 1992; a Berlin court's 1997 judgment attributed the order to Iran's leadership. Germany hosted more refugees from Iran than any other country at the end of 2025: 45,128 (UNHCR).