Record Number of Discrimination Reports Filed in the Netherlands as Online Hate Surges

The number of discrimination complaints and registrations at official Dutch bodies rose significantly in 2025, according to the annual Discriminatiecijfers report, published on Tuesday and presented to Interior Minister Pieter Heerma. The report was compiled by knowledge centre Art.1 and research bureau Verwonderzoek on behalf of the ministries of Interior Affairs and Justice and Security.

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The headline figures

The national discrimination reporting point Discriminatie.nl received 25,356 reports in 2025, 70 percent more than in 2024. This total includes over 15,000 so-called cluster reports: a single political statement or government action generating a high volume of individual complaints. The online discrimination reporting point Meld.Online Discriminatie also received nearly 2,000 reports about a single incident, bringing its total to 2,768, four times as many as the previous year. The police registered 10,748 discrimination incidents, a rise of 12 percent compared to 2024.

The Public Prosecution Service (OM) registered 1,152 criminal discrimination cases in 2025, up 68 percent from 683 in 2024. The sharpest rise was in criminal offences with a discrimination dimension, particularly personal insults, of which 729 were registered.

Online hate the main focus

This year's report zooms in on online discrimination. Reports to Meld.Online Discriminatie have been rising steadily since 2022. The complaints frequently concern statements made on social media in response to the conflict in the Middle East, Dutch migration policy and local disputes such as the construction of a rainbow crossing or the arrival of an asylum seeker centre. At Discriminatie.nl, 674 reports were received about discriminatory messages and videos appearing in users' social media timelines. Police reports about online discrimination mainly concern personal insults and threats via social media.

To address the growing problem, Discriminatie.nl and Meld.Online Discriminatie signed a cooperation agreement on Tuesday to work more closely together.

What grounds are most reported

Discrimination on grounds of ethnic origin and skin colour was the most commonly registered form in 2025. Sexual orientation was the second most common. Antisemitism was also prominently represented.

Among criminal cases handled by the OM, race was the most common ground for specific discrimination offences with 73 cases, followed by antisemitism with 46 cases. For criminal offences with a discrimination dimension, sexual orientation was the most registered ground, followed by race.

A separate finding highlighted that a quarter of all discrimination cases registered by the OM were antisemitic in nature, despite Jewish people making up less than 0.3 percent of the Dutch population.

Political statements driving cluster reports

A clear peak in reports occurred in August 2025, following controversy over a social media post by Geert Wilders containing a caricature that negatively portrayed a Muslim woman next to an innocuously depicted blonde woman. This led to a significant spike in reports on grounds of religion and about public and political statements.

Nationwide, a single PVV campaign poster triggered more than 14,000 individual reports to Discriminatie.nl.

Most discrimination still goes unreported

The report stresses that the figures do not reflect the actual scale of discrimination in the Netherlands, since only a small fraction of incidents are ever reported. CBS research from 2025 found that one in ten people in the Netherlands experiences discrimination. Of those, only 3 percent report it to the police and only 1 percent to another official body.