People from more than 140 countries around the world got married in Slovenia in the past 15 years with an average 900 marriages between a Slovenian and a foreign national recorded every year.

Data compiled by the Interior Ministry shows the largest number of foreign spouses to marry Slovenians comes from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A total of 3,957 Bosnian nationals tied the knot with a Slovenian in the past 15 years, of whom 2,211 were grooms and 1,746 were brides.

The second largest group were Serbian citizens (781 grooms and 1,071 brides) and the third citizens of Croatia (566 grooms and 811 brides).

In terms of the number of foreign citizens who got married in Slovenia in the period, there are another 16 countries that exceed one hundred.

There are great differences between genders in cases of certain countries; Slovenians married 150 Thai women in the last 15 years but no Thai men.

There were no grooms from Moldova or the Philippines, whilst 59 Moldovan and 51 Filipino women got married in Slovenia. There are an additional 20 countries from where a certain number of brides came, while there were no grooms.

More than 97% of the 469 Ukrainians who got married in Slovenia in the past 15 years were women.

While it was predominately women nationals of the Dominican Republic, Russia, Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia who got married in Slovenia, there are also 25 countries that only grooms came from.

Brides from Gambia, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt and the Netherlands accounted for fewer than 10% of all spouses from those countries.

The Public Administration Ministry says that administrative units are detecting individual cases of suspected sham marriages.

These are often registered in order to obtain a residence permit, and most of such applications get rejected after the verification is initiated. There are also reports of such people getting married elsewhere after being rejected in Slovenia.

The Interior Ministry does not keep statistics on suspected sham marriages but police say that the criminal offence of certifying a false statement carries a prison fine of up to three years.

Considering the most recent available data on the number of all marriages in the country, those in which one of the spouses was a foreigner represented about 14% in 2023.