Most Czech immigration violations involve overstays, police figures show

Most immigration violations detected in Czechia involve people exceeding their permitted stay rather than migrants passing through the country, according to figures released by the foreign police.

Officers identified 8,050 foreign nationals staying illegally between January and September, 74 fewer than during the same period last year. The decline came despite a 12 percent increase in residency checks.

Transit migration increased, but remained a small part of the picture: police detained 194 people traveling through Czechia irregularly, compared with 112 a year earlier.

According to the foreign police report, people staying in Czechia without valid permission accounted for more than 96 percent of detected irregular migration cases.

Most had exceeded the length of their authorized stay, police spokesman Josef Urban said.

The largest nationality groups among those detected were Ukrainians, Moldovans, Vietnamese, Uzbeks, Georgians and Russians.

The figures count cases identified by police. They do not establish the total number of people living without valid residence permission, nor do the nationality rankings indicate the likelihood of a violation within each country’s resident community.

Transit cases—people attempting to travel onward through Czechia—accounted for 2.4 percent of the total.

“Although irregular transit migration through Czech territory increased by 82 people year over year, its share of overall irregular migration remains low,” Urban said.

He described Germany as the principal onward destination for those detected in transit.

Russians accounted for 114 of the 194 transit detections, followed by Afghans with 41.

Police said Russian nationals mainly used land routes, entering Croatia irregularly before traveling through countries including Hungary, Slovakia or Austria and then Czechia toward Germany.

Afghan nationals detected in transit typically arrived on flights from Greece, according to the report. Police said these journeys often involved altered or otherwise invalid travel documents, or no documents.

The routes therefore included both overland travel and flights within the Schengen area.

Foreign police carried out 144,179 residency checks during the first nine months of the year, up 12 percent from the equivalent period in 2025.

Their activity included checks on 416,736 foreign nationals, 23,434 accommodation establishments and 14,124 business premises across Czechia.

The combination of increased checks and a slight decline in detected unlawful stays offers a different picture from the rise in transit cases alone. Most of the violations police encountered concerned residence status within Czechia, while onward migration remained comparatively limited.