Three out of four Swiss live in cities. And it is there that disbelief is growing.

Known for its role in the Protestant Reformation, the God-centred lyrics of its national anthem, and the cross on its flag, Switzerland has experienced in the last 50 years a rapid process of secularisation.

“Since the year 2000, the proportion of people with no religious affiliation has risen sharply”, states the report ‘Statistic of Swiss cities 2024’ published by the federal office for statistics.

This trend “can be observed in the cities, where 32.7% of people state that they do not belong to any religion”, the document reads.

One example is the third-largest city, Basel (180,000 inhabitants), where 53% of the population identifies as non-believer.

Although all faith groups lose adherents, it is especially the Reformed Protestants (built around the SEK, Switzerland’s Evangelical Church) who experience the strongest fall. Members of this mainline Protestant church now represent 19% of the population in cities, far away from the 49% of adherents it had in 1970.

Catholics and Muslims

Roman Catholicism, now the largest religious group in Switzerland, still represents 31% of today’s population in the cities (45% in 1970).

The Muslim minority, says the report, remains more or less stable around a 6% of the population, a figure that doubles in middle-sized cities with higher number of migrants.

The report does not mention the trends among other faith groups such as free evangelicals or Jews.