- Population
- 600,000
- Language
- Arabic, Egyptian
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Throughout the Kuwait City conurbation, most densely in Hawalli, Khaitan, Farwaniya and Jleeb al-Shuyoukh, and in Salmiya, Fahaheel, Mahboula and Jahra
Egyptians are Kuwait's largest Arab expatriate community and its second-largest foreign nationality after Indians: about 667,000 at the end of 2025, of whom some 600,000 are Sunni Muslims. They have come since the 1950s, when Egyptian teachers, judges, doctors and engineers helped build Kuwait's schools, courts and ministries, and today they range from those professionals to hundreds of thousands of construction workers, drivers, shop assistants, accountants and building watchmen. Nearly a quarter of everyone working in Kuwait's private sector is Egyptian. Their Cairo dialect, familiar to every Kuwaiti from film and television, lets them blend into Arabic-speaking workplaces, yet most live as single men in shared flats in Hawalli, Khaitan and Jleeb al-Shuyoukh, sending money home to villages in the Nile Delta and Upper Egypt.
Read more- Population
- 333,000
- Language
- Bengali
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Jleeb al-Shuyoukh and Farwaniya, Kuwait City (Mirqab, Sharq), Mahboula, Mangaf and Fahaheel, Jahra; cleaners' and labourers' camps and Kuwaiti homes throughout the country
Bangladeshis are Kuwait's third-largest foreign community, about 333,000 people in mid-2026, almost all of them Bengali-speaking Muslim men who left villages in districts such as Cumilla and Chandpur to work as cleaners, labourers, drivers and household staff. Many owe their jobs to a visa trade in which brokers charge up to 800,000 taka for a work permit that officially costs a few dinars, and a Bangladeshi member of parliament was jailed in Kuwait in 2021 after his cleaning companies brought in thousands of workers who had paid for their jobs. Over 86,000 work in private homes, and others sweep Kuwait's streets, airport and government buildings for some of the lowest wages in the country. In 2025 their embassy set the first minimum wages for Bangladeshis in Kuwait, a sign of how little protection they had before.
Read more- Population
- 226,500
- Language
- Tagalog
- Religion
- Christianity - Roman Catholicism
- Location
- Employer homes in every governorate; Salmiya, Hawalli, Kuwait City (Sharq, Mirqab), Farwaniya and Jleeb al-Shuyoukh, Fahaheel and Mangaf
Filipinos are Kuwait's fourth-largest foreign community, after Indians, Egyptians and Bangladeshis, about 226,000 people, and more than half of them are household workers: housemaids, nannies, cooks and drivers living in Kuwaiti homes. They are the backbone of Kuwait's Christian congregations, filling Tagalog Masses on Fridays at the Holy Family Cathedral in Kuwait City, St Therese in Salmiya and Our Lady of Arabia in Ahmadi, and keeping the nine dawn Masses of Simbang Gabi before Christmas. The killings of housemaids Joanna Demafelis in 2018 and Jullebee Ranara in 2023 led both times to deployment bans and visa freezes between Manila and Kuwait, and the community lives with the memory of those cases.
Read more- Population
- ~130,000-320,000
- Language
- Malayalam
- Religion
- Mixed (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism)
- Location
- Abbasiya ('Little Kerala') and Jleeb al-Shuyoukh, Farwaniya, Kuwait City (Mirqab), Hawalli and Salmiya, Mangaf and Fahaheel; nurses in hospital housing across the country
Malayalis from Kerala have worked in Kuwait since the early oil years, and today they are the best-organised of the country's Indian communities, with nurses, engineers, accountants and shopkeepers alongside drivers and construction workers. Their heartland is Abbasiya, a dense quarter of apartment blocks nicknamed Little Kerala, where Kerala restaurants sell take-away Onam feasts on banana leaves. Unlike most migrants they are split between Christianity, Islam and Hinduism, and Kuwait's Malankara Orthodox, Mar Thoma and Syro-Malabar Catholic congregations, some meeting in basement chapels of 1,500 people, are among the largest Malayali churches outside India. The community suffered a heavy blow in June 2024, when 24 Keralites died in a fire at a workers' building in Mangaf.
Read more- Population
- 200,000
- Language
- Standard Arabic
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Hawalli, Salmiya, Farwaniya, Khaitan, Jleeb al-Shuyoukh and Fahaheel in the Kuwait City conurbation
Syrian Arabs are the second-largest Arab expatriate community in Kuwait after the Egyptians, about 200,000 people. Teachers, engineers, doctors and traders began arriving in the 1960s, and after 2011 many residents brought in parents, siblings and children on family visas, since Kuwait does not grant refugee status. Most are Sunni Muslims from Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Daraa, with Christian, Druze and Alawite minorities, and they speak Levantine Arabic in a country where Gulf Arabic and English dominate public life. Syrian sweet shops, shawarma stands and grill restaurants are a familiar sight in Hawalli and Salmiya, apartment districts where many Syrian families live. Since the fall of the Assad government in December 2024 families have weighed going home against Kuwaiti salaries and the destruction they left behind.
Read more- Population
- 186,600
- Language
- Nepali (individual language)
- Religion
- Hinduism
- Location
- Throughout urban Kuwait: Farwaniya and Jleeb al-Shuyoukh, Kuwait City, Hawalli, Ahmadi (Fahaheel, Mahboula); domestic workers in employer homes in every governorate
Nepalis are one of Kuwait's fastest-growing migrant communities, 186,600 strong in mid-2026 against about 67,000 at the end of 2020. About two-thirds work for companies as cleaners, guards, drivers, restaurant and retail staff, and most of the rest are domestic workers, many of them women who travelled despite Nepal's restrictions on sending housemaids to the Gulf. Nearly all are Hindus or Buddhists from Nepal's hills and Terai, living in shared rooms in Farwaniya and Jleeb al-Shuyoukh or in their employers' homes. The community has paid a heavy price in recent years: eleven Nepalis died in the August 2025 bootleg methanol poisoning traced to Jleeb al-Shuyoukh, and a Nepali driver was killed by an Iranian missile in northern Kuwait in July 2026.
Read more- Population
- 155,000
- Language
- Arabic, Najdi
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni (Hanbali/Wahhabi-Salafi)
- Location
- Tribal suburbs of Jahra, Ahmadi and Farwaniya governorates and Kuwait City, alongside Kuwaiti kin
Saudi Arabs are one of Kuwait's largest Arab communities and, unlike most foreigners in the country, are not strangers but cousins: most belong to the same Mutair, Ajman, Awazim, Utaybah, Shammar and Anizah tribes as Kuwait's own tribal citizens, whose grazing lands straddled the border long before it was drawn. Many are married into Kuwaiti families, and some have grandfathers recorded in Kuwait's 1958 census. As Gulf Cooperation Council citizens they can live, work in government ministries and the army, and trade without a sponsor, and since 2014 they have been paid the same public-sector salaries as Kuwaitis. They share the Bedouin Arabic, coffee hospitality, tribal poetry and evening diwaniya gatherings of the Kuwaiti tribes among whom they live.
Read more- Population
- ~132,000 (est. 125,000-140,000; of 197,400 Sri Lankans)
- Language
- Sinhala
- Religion
- Buddhism - Theravada
- Location
- Employer homes in every governorate; Farwaniya, Jleeb al-Shuyoukh, Hawalli and Kuwait City for company workers
Nearly 200,000 Sri Lankans live in Kuwait, about two-thirds of them Sinhalese, and Kuwait is now the leading destination for Sri Lankan migrant workers. About two in three are live-in domestic workers, most of them women: Sri Lankans are the second-largest group of domestic workers in Kuwait, behind only Indians, and their number has risen by two-thirds in a decade. As Theravada Buddhists in a country with no Buddhist temple, they keep Vesak, all-night pirith chanting and sil observance on the grounds of the Sri Lankan embassy, where visiting monks from Sri Lanka lead the rites. Their public culture has met resistance: in 2010 Islamist protesters forced more than 5,000 Sri Lankans out of a licensed cultural festival at the Jahra stadium.
Read more- Population
- ~70,000-90,000
- Language
- Urdu
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Khaitan, Jleeb al-Shuyoukh and Farwaniya, Hawalli and Salmiya, Kuwait City, Fahaheel, Mangaf and Ahmadi
Urdu is the common language of Kuwait's Pakistanis who are not Punjabi, chiefly Pashtuns from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Urdu-speaking Karachiites, Kashmiris, Hindko speakers, a few thousand Sindhis and a few Baloch, and of Indian Muslims from Hyderabad, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar who speak it at home. Pakistanis settled in Kuwait from the oil boom onward, but Kuwait stopped issuing them new visas for almost two decades until May 2025, so the community is older and more settled than most migrant groups, with about a dozen Pakistani schools teaching in English and Urdu. They work as drivers, mechanics, construction and oil-services workers, shopkeepers, doctors and engineers. Urdu poets from Kuwait recite their ghazals at mushaira poetry evenings across the Gulf.
Read more- Population
- 65,000
- Language
- Arabic, Egyptian
- Religion
- Christianity - Coptic Orthodox (Oriental Orthodox)
- Location
- Kuwait City conurbation, centred on St Mark's Cathedral in Hawalli; families in Hawalli, Salmiya, Farwaniya and the southern towns around Fahaheel
Coptic Egyptians are the Christian minority among Kuwait's roughly 667,000 Egyptians, about 60,000 Coptic Orthodox and 5,000 Coptic Catholics, most of them engineers, accountants, doctors, pharmacists, teachers and skilled tradesmen, many living with their families. Kuwait gave them the first Coptic church ever built outside Egypt in 1961, and in April 2017 Pope Tawadros II made the first papal visit to the country to open St Mark's Cathedral in Hawalli, at 6,500 square metres the largest Coptic church in the Gulf. On Fridays, Kuwait's weekend, the cathedral fills for liturgy in Arabic and Coptic, and every Ramadan the church hosts a ghabqa, a late-night meal, for Kuwaiti officials and Muslim neighbours.
Read more- Population
- ~40,000-60,000
- Language
- Levantine Arabic
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Hawalli, Salmiya, Farwaniya, Jleeb al-Shuyoukh and Kuwait City
Palestinians in Kuwait are the remnant of what was once the country's largest foreign community, about 400,000 people in 1990, who staffed its schools, ministries and companies and founded the Fatah movement there in 1959. After the Palestine Liberation Organization sided with Iraq during the 1990 occupation, Kuwait expelled or barred the return of almost all of them, and by late 1991 only about 20,000 remained. Today some 40,000 to 60,000 people of Palestinian origin live in Kuwait, most holding Jordanian passports and some Palestinian or Egyptian travel documents, after relations were mended with an apology in 2004, the reopening of the Palestinian embassy in 2013 and the rehiring of Palestinian teachers from 2016. Hawalli, the heart of the pre-1990 community, remains home to many Palestinian families. Most are Sunni Muslims, and Palestinian families make up most of Kuwait's few hundred Christian citizens.
Read more- Population
- ~45,000-50,000
- Language
- Levantine Arabic
- Religion
- Islam
- Location
- Salmiya, Jabriya, Hawalli, Rumaithiya, Mishref and Kuwait City
Lebanese Arabs have lived in Kuwait for more than a century, since the first emigrant arrived by way of Basra around 1915, and today number about 45,000 to 50,000. Merchants, bankers, engineers, doctors, teachers and media and hospitality professionals, they are one of the most established Arab expatriate communities, with a business council, women's associations and their own churches. Unlike most groups in Kuwait they are religiously mixed: Shia and Sunni Muslims live alongside Maronite, Greek Catholic and Greek Orthodox Christians. Lebanese restaurants and bakeries selling manakish and mezze are part of everyday Kuwaiti life. Since 2021 the community has lived under suspicion over Hezbollah, with residencies refused to some Shia Lebanese and arrests and deportations during the 2026 war with Iran.
Read more- Population
- ~30,000-50,000
- Language
- Iranian Persian
- Religion
- Islam - Shia
- Location
- Kuwait City (Mubarakiya market, Sharq), Bneid al-Gar and other central districts; fishing harbours
Iranians in Kuwait are a long-settled community of merchants and workers from across the Gulf, many of whose families have lived in the country for decades and whose children were born there. They sell fabric, carpets and sweets in the old Mubarakiya market, bake bread, work the vegetable market and crew fishing boats, continuing trade links across the Gulf that are centuries old. They are separate from Kuwait's 'Ajam, citizens of Iranian descent who have become Arabic-speaking Kuwaitis; these Iranians keep Iranian passports and Persian as their home language. Since Iran's missile and drone strikes on Kuwait began in February 2026 they have lived under suspicion: flights home stopped, restaurants dropped 'Iranian' from their signs, and in August 2026 Kuwait closed the only Iranian school, which taught about 1,500 children in Persian.
Read more- Population
- ~15,000-30,000 (before March 2026)
- Language
- English
- Religion
- Christianity - Protestantism
- Location
- Military bases (Camp Arifjan near Shuaiba, Camp Buehring in the northwestern desert, Ali Al Salem Air Base in Jahra); civilians in Salmiya, Kuwait City, Mishref and Ahmadi
Americans in Kuwait are a transient community tied to the alliance forged when a US-led coalition liberated the country from Iraq in 1991. Before 2026 about 13,500 American troops served at Camp Arifjan, the forward headquarters of US Army Central, at Camp Buehring in the northwestern desert and at Ali Al Salem Air Base, alongside defence contractors, oil engineers, diplomats and teachers at the American School of Kuwait and the American University of Kuwait. The American link is older than the bases: Reformed Church in America missionaries opened the American Mission Hospital in Kuwait Town on land granted by Sheikh Mubarak in 1911, and Dr Eleanor Calverley opened the country's first hospital for women there; the restored buildings are now the Amricani Cultural Centre. When the 2026 Iran war began, a drone killed six US Army Reserve soldiers at Port Shuaiba on 1 March, the embassy suspended operations, and civilians were urged to leave overland through Saudi Arabia.
Read more- Population
- ~15,000-25,000
- Language
- Standard Arabic
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Hawalli, Salmiya, Farwaniya, Jabriya and Kuwait City
East Bank Jordanians in Kuwait are a modest professional community of teachers, doctors, engineers and accountants, part of the 33,000 to 40,000 Jordanian passport holders in the country, many of whom are of Palestinian origin. Jordanians once formed, together with Palestinians, one of Kuwait's largest communities, some 500,000 people in the late 1980s, until Jordan's sympathy for Iraq in 1990 led to mass departures and a long freeze. Relations recovered, and Kuwait began hiring Jordanian teachers again around 2010. They speak Jordanian Levantine Arabic, are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim with a small Christian minority, and keep strong clan ties to towns such as Irbid, Salt and Karak. Like other expatriates they live in rented apartments and depend on employer sponsorship.
Read more- Population
- 20,000
- Language
- Arabic, Sudanese
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Kuwait City conurbation: Farwaniya and Jleeb al-Shuyoukh, Hawalli, Jahra and the southern towns around Fahaheel
Sudanese in Kuwait are a community of about 20,000 people, most of them Arabic-speaking Muslims from the Nile valley of northern and central Sudan. Unlike most African migrants to the Gulf they are largely men in skilled and professional work: over 2,000 are doctors, dentists and nurses in Kuwait's hospitals, and others teach in universities or work as accountants, engineers and administrators, while a growing number come as drivers and household staff. Since war broke out in Sudan in April 2023 most cannot go home, and their wages support relatives displaced across Sudan and into Egypt. They gather over sweet tea and coffee poured from the clay jabana, the men in white jalabiya and turban on feast days and the women in the bright toub wrap.
Read more- Population
- ~13,000-18,000
- Language
- Arabic, Mesopotamian
- Religion
- Islam
- Location
- Kuwait City, Hawalli, Farwaniya and Jahra
Iraqi Arabs in Kuwait are a small, cautious community of 13,000 to 18,000 people, living beside the country that occupied Kuwait in 1990-91 and whose northern border lies only a few hours' drive from Basra. Ties are old: merchants, sailors and families moved between Basra, Zubair and Kuwait for centuries, and some Kuwaiti families are of southern Iraqi origin. After the 1991 war Kuwait expelled many Iraqis and refused to shelter refugees, and suspicion has lingered through disputes over the border, the Khor Abdullah waterway and Kuwaitis missing since the occupation. Today's Iraqis are mostly professionals, traders and family members, largely Shia from Basra and the south with Sunni and Christian minorities, who speak Mesopotamian Arabic close to the Gulf Arabic of their hosts.
Read more- Population
- 13,000
- Language
- Amharic (primary), Oromo, Tigrinya, others
- Religion
- Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity and Sunni Islam (mixed)
- Location
- Throughout Kuwait in employers' households; informal communities in Jleeb al-Shuyoukh, Farwaniya and Mahboula
Ethiopians in Kuwait are a community of roughly 15,000 to 30,000 people, about 13,000 of them Oromo, Tigrayans and other peoples besides the Amhara, almost all of them young women from Ethiopia's highlands who came to work as live-in maids in Kuwaiti homes; there are only about ten Ethiopian men for every hundred women. Their number has fallen from over 75,000 in the early 2010s, when Ethiopians were by far the largest African community, after Ethiopia banned domestic-work migration and a new labour agreement was slow to take effect. They come from several Ethiopian peoples, chiefly Amhara, Oromo and Tigrayans, and use Amharic as their common language. Orthodox Christians among them keep the long fasts and gather where they can for the coffee ceremony and the feasts of Meskel and Timket, while the Muslims among them, many from Wollo and Oromia, pray in Kuwait's mosques.
Read more- Population
- ~10,000-15,000
- Language
- Arabic, Ta'izzi-Adeni
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Kuwait City conurbation: Hawalli, Farwaniya and Jleeb al-Shuyoukh, Jahra
Yemenis in Kuwait are a small, long-settled Arab community of perhaps 10,000 to 15,000, far fewer than before 1990, when tens of thousands of Yemeni workers lived in the country. Iraq's invasion in August 1990 forced some 45,000 Yemenis and their families to flee, and Yemen's refusal to back the war against Iraq kept Kuwait's doors largely closed to them for years. Those who remain are mostly families who have lived in Kuwait for decades, with about as many wives and children as workers, along with shopkeepers, drivers, restaurant owners and professionals. Mandi, rice and meat slow-cooked in a pit oven, is the Yemeni dish now eaten across Kuwait, while the families who brought it worry for relatives living through Yemen's war.
Read more- Population
- ~6,000-6,100
- Language
- Indonesian
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Kuwait City and Hawalli (hospitals, hotels), Ahmadi oil district; remaining domestic workers in employer homes
Kuwait's Indonesian community has shrunk to about 6,000 people since Indonesia stopped sending new housemaids to the Middle East in 2015; the number of Indonesian domestic workers fell from almost 9,000 to under 2,000 in a decade. Today nearly half are skilled workers: nurses employed by Kuwait's Ministry of Health, oil and gas technicians, and hotel and factory staff. Most are Sunni Muslims who share Kuwait's faith, with a small Christian minority, and the embassy's Independence Day celebration each August is the community's main gathering.
Read more- Population
- ~5,000-6,000
- Language
- Mandarin Chinese
- Religion
- Ethnoreligion - Chinese Folk Religion
- Location
- Kuwait City and Salmiya; construction camps at Chinese-built projects in Jahra governorate (South Saad Al-Abdullah and South Al-Mutlaa new towns) and northern Kuwait (Mubarak Al-Kabeer Port, Bubiyan Island)
A few thousand Chinese live in Kuwait, most of them engineers, managers and skilled workers of the roughly 70 Chinese companies that build its towers, housing cities and ports. China has been Kuwait's largest trading partner for over a decade, and Chinese contractors built the Central Bank of Kuwait's headquarters and Sabah Al-Salem University City; in late 2025 China Communications Construction Company won a four-billion-dollar contract for the first phase of the Mubarak Al-Kabeer Port on Bubiyan Island. Most are religiously unaffiliated, living in company compounds on fixed postings, and they gather for Chinese New Year at the embassy and the China Cultural Center that opened in Kuwait in 2025, the first in the Gulf. In July 2026 an Iranian missile struck a Chinese company's building in northern Kuwait, killing a Nepali driver; no Chinese were hurt.
Read more- Population
- 5,000
- Language
- Armenian
- Religion
- Christianity - Armenian Apostolic
- Location
- Kuwait City area: Salmiya (Sts Vartanantz Church, prelacy) and Surra (Armenian School)
Kuwait's Armenians are descendants of genocide survivors who had rebuilt their lives in Syria, Lebanon and Iran and then came to Kuwait from the late 1940s as engineers, contractors and skilled craftsmen during the oil boom. They grew to about 12,000 by the mid-1980s, fell to roughly 500 after the 1990 Iraqi invasion, and have slowly rebuilt to around 5,000. The community gathers around the Sts Vartanantz Church in Salmiya, seat of the Armenian Apostolic prelacy for the whole Gulf, and the Armenian School, which has taught children from kindergarten to grade 12 in Armenian since 1960. As one of the few Christian peoples in Kuwait with their own church, school and clubs, they keep a distinct language, liturgy and social life within a Muslim society.
Read more- Population
- ~4,000-6,000
- Language
- English
- Religion
- Unaffiliated
- Location
- Salmiya, Mishref and Kuwait City; Ahmadi oil town
A few thousand Britons live in Kuwait, most of them teachers, oil engineers, medical staff, consultants and military advisers on fixed contracts. Their ties to the country run back to the 1899 agreement that made Kuwait a British protectorate until independence in 1961, and to the Kuwait Oil Company, whose British managers built the garden town of Ahmadi in the 1940s and 1950s. St Paul's Anglican Church there, built by the oil company and consecrated in 1956, still serves English-speaking and Asian congregations, and British-curriculum schools educate thousands of Kuwaiti and expatriate children. During the Iraqi invasion of 1990 hundreds of Britons, including passengers of a British Airways flight caught on the ground, were held hostage and some were used as human shields.
Read more- Population
- 3,600
- Language
- Arabic, Omani
- Religion
- Islam - Ibadi and Sunni
- Location
- Kuwait City and its suburbs; students at Kuwait University and the Public Authority for Applied Education
Omanis are a small community of a few thousand in Kuwait, among the fewest of the Gulf nationalities living there. As citizens of a fellow Gulf Cooperation Council state they need no sponsor, and they come mainly as university students, public-sector employees and spouses in Kuwaiti families; each year the Omani embassy honours Omani graduates of Kuwait University and the country's arts and education institutes. Unlike Kuwait's Sunni and Shia Arabs, many follow Ibadi Islam, Oman's own school of Islam, which is neither Sunni nor Shia. They are recognisable by the embroidered kumma cap and the Omani dishdasha with its tassel.
Read more- Population
- ~3,000-4,000
- Language
- Turkish
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Kuwait City, Salmiya and Hawalli; construction sites of Turkish contractors
Turks in Kuwait are a small professional community of a few thousand: engineers and workers with the Turkish construction firms that have built major projects such as airport and infrastructure works, doctors, teachers, barbers, restaurateurs and businesspeople. They come on fixed contracts rather than to settle, and the Turkish embassy draws them together for national days, religious holidays and cultural festivals such as the 2023 'Turkish Village' at the Hunting and Equestrian Club, with Ottoman mehter music, folk dance and mounted archery. Like their Kuwaiti hosts they are Sunni Muslims, but they follow the Hanafi school rather than the Maliki and Hanbali traditions of Kuwait, and speak Turkish at home.
Read more- Population
- ~1,000-1,500
- Language
- French
- Religion
- Christianity - Roman Catholicism
- Location
- Kuwait City and the coastal suburbs (Salmiya and neighbouring districts)
The French in Kuwait are a small expatriate community of about a thousand people: engineers and managers with French and international companies, diplomats, teachers and their families. Most stay a few years on contract. Their main institution is the Lycée Français de Koweït, a French-curriculum school founded in 1989 whose 1,200 to 1,300 pupils are mostly the children of other expatriates and of Kuwaitis, with French nationals only about one in eight; in 2015 Kuwaiti censors covered the nudes in Delacroix's 'Liberty Leading the People' in its textbooks. Most are nominally Catholic or secular, living in a society where public life is shaped by Islam.
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