Last year Macedonia registered 2,185 divorces. That is eight percent more than the year before. In the same period 10,507 marriages were concluded - 5.1 percent fewer than in 2024.

The two numbers are moving in opposite directions at the same time, and that is what makes the picture more interesting than either figure on its own. For every 100 marriages concluded last year there were almost 21 divorces.

Serbia went the other way

According to official data from Serbia's Statistical Office published in July 2026, Serbia recorded 29,402 marriages and 10,148 divorces last year - 4.4 percent fewer divorces than in 2024. There, for the first time, the rising divorce trend was broken.

Here it was not. Here it is rising, and in a year when marriages are falling. So fewer people are going in, and more are coming out.

What the statistics do not say

The state statistics do not explain why. They count. Public debate most often points to the high cost of living, economic uncertainty, emigration and changing habits of living - but not one of those factors is measured in the official records.

Some caution is needed here. Rising divorce figures are not automatic proof of a crisis - in societies where divorce is cheaper, faster and less stigmatised, the number rises without meaning that marriages are worse. What is harder to explain is the drop in marriages. Those 5.1 percent fewer weddings are people who did not take the step - by choice, for lack of money, or because they are no longer here.

Where we stand next to the EU

According to Eurostat, in 2023 the European Union recorded around 1.8 million marriages and around 700,000 divorces - that is 4.0 marriages and 2.0 divorces per thousand inhabitants. The highest divorce rate in 2024 was in Latvia, at 2.8 per thousand, the lowest in Malta at 0.9.

Macedonia does not have those indicators published within the same comparison, which is itself part of the problem: there are numbers, there is no context. The institutions publish divorces as an annual data point, not as a subject somebody is drafting policy around.