Aragón also ranks as the fourth autonomous community with the highest proportion of foreign students, behind only the Valencian Community (19.9%), the Balearic Islands (19.3%) and La Rioja (18.6%). Spain’s average, meanwhile, stands at 13.6%, four percentage points below Aragón’s figure.
The report also provides information on where these students come from. In Aragón, the largest group comes from the Americas, followed by students from Africa. They are followed by students from European Union countries, the rest of Europe, and Asia and Oceania. The Ministry provides this distribution for the 2025-2026 academic year in a comparison of all the autonomous communities.
As for where these students attend school, the latest available data corresponds to the 2024-2025 academic year. That year, 79.4% of foreign students in Aragón were enrolled in public schools, while 18.2% attended publicly funded private schools and just 2.4% attended private schools without public funding.
MORE THAN ONE MILLION FOREIGN STUDENTS IN SPAIN
The share of foreign students has also increased across the country over the past decade. Spain went from 716,736 foreign students in the 2015-2016 academic year to 1,180,600 in 2025-2026, an increase of nearly 464,000 over ten years.
Growth has also continued compared with the immediately preceding academic year. In 2024-2025, there were 1,148,217 foreign students, compared with 1,180,600 currently, an increase of 32,383 students in one year. Primary education currently has the highest number, with 428,691 foreign students in Spain, followed by compulsory secondary education, with 307,021.
