Albanians in North Macedonia: A Native People, Not a Diaspora

North Macedonia is unlike anywhere else in the Albanian world. The Albanians here are not a diaspora or a community of migrants. They are a native people, rooted in the western towns and mountains for centuries, and today they make up about a quarter of the country. Their story runs from the Ottoman era through the birth of the Albanian alphabet, a long struggle for rights under Yugoslavia, a short but wrenching war in 2001, and a peace that remade the whole country into a power-sharing state. This guide tells all of it.

It is part of our Albanians Around the World series.

Quick Facts: Albanians in North Macedonia

• Population: 446,245 people, about 24.3 percent of the country (2021 census), the second-largest ethnic group after Macedonians.
• Status: A native, indigenous people, not immigrants; recognized as a constituent part of the state.
• Where they live: The west and northwest, above all the Polog region around Tetovo and Gostivar, plus Debar, Struga, Kicevo, western Skopje, and the Kumanovo area.
• Language: Albanian is a second official language across the whole country since 2019.
• Famous connection: Mother Teresa was born in Skopje in 1910 to an Albanian family.

On This Page

• How Many Albanians Live in North Macedonia?
• A Native People, Not a Diaspora
• The Albanian Awakening in Macedonian Lands
• Under Yugoslavia
• The 1990s: Independence and Rising Tension
• 2001: The Insurgency
• The Ohrid Framework Agreement
• Language, Power, and a First
• Where Albanians Live
• Notable Figures
• Frequently Asked Questions

How Many Albanians Live in North Macedonia?

The 2021 census counted 446,245 ethnic Albanians in North Macedonia, about 24.3 percent of the resident population, making them by far the largest of the country’s minorities and second only to the ethnic Macedonian majority. That share has held roughly steady for decades, and in some western regions Albanians are the overwhelming majority.

Counting Albanians here has long been politically charged. Albanians boycotted the 1991 census in protest and disputed the results of the internationally monitored 1994 census, and disputes over numbers have shadowed every count since, because population share translates directly into language, education, and political rights. The 2021 census, the first in nearly two decades, was closely watched for exactly that reason.

A Native People, Not a Diaspora

The single most important fact about the Albanians of North Macedonia is that they did not come from somewhere else. They have lived in the western part of the country, in the valleys of the Polog and around Debar, Struga, and Kicevo, since the Ottoman centuries and before. Under Ottoman rule the region was governed from the provincial capitals of Skopje and Monastir (today Bitola), and Albanians were woven through its towns and highlands as farmers, traders, craftsmen, soldiers, and administrators.

When the modern Balkan borders were drawn in the Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1913, the Albanian-inhabited lands of Macedonia were awarded to Serbia rather than to the newly independent Albania. Overnight, hundreds of thousands of Albanians found themselves outside the Albanian state, a division that has shaped their history ever since.

The Albanian Awakening in Macedonian Lands

Far from being a backwater, this region was a cradle of the Albanian national awakening. Delegates from the Macedonian towns took part in the League of Prizren of 1878, the first great Albanian national movement. And it was in Manastir (Bitola), in November 1908, that Albanian intellectuals from across the lands gathered for the Congress of Manastir and adopted a Latin-based Albanian alphabet, the one still used today, alongside a second script that soon fell out of use. It is hard to overstate what that means: the modern written Albanian language was standardized in a town that now lies inside North Macedonia.

A few years later, in August 1912, Albanian revolutionaries briefly captured Skopje during the uprising against the Ottomans that helped clear the way for Albanian independence later that year.

Under Yugoslavia

For most of the 20th century the region was part of Yugoslavia, and the Albanians occupied an awkward place in it. They were the largest nationality in Yugoslavia without a republic of their own, split between Kosovo and Macedonia. Under Tito they won real gains, Albanian-language schooling, cultural institutions, and local representation, but never the constitutional status of a founding nation, and the sense of being second-class endured. As unrest spread through neighboring Kosovo in the 1980s, Albanian protests in Macedonia grew with it.

The 1990s: Independence and Rising Tension

When Macedonia broke from Yugoslavia and declared independence in 1991, Albanians largely boycotted the referendum. The new constitution defined the country as the national state of the Macedonian people, casting Albanians as a minority in a land they considered their own, and the decade that followed was one of steadily rising friction.

Two flashpoints stood out. In 1994, Albanians founded an Albanian-language university in Tetovo; the state declared it illegal, and clashes over it turned deadly in 1995. Then in 1997 came the flag crisis: when the mayors of Gostivar and Tetovo raised the Albanian flag over their town halls, police moved in, and three protesters were killed in Gostivar. These were the sparks that lay behind the fire to come.

2001: The Insurgency

In early 2001, an ethnic Albanian armed group calling itself the National Liberation Army (in Albanian, Ushtria Clirimtare Kombetare, or UCK), many of its fighters veterans of the recent Kosovo War, launched an insurgency demanding greater rights for Albanians. Fighting spread through the hills above Tetovo, around Kumanovo, and to the village of Aracinovo on the edge of Skopje. Between January and August 2001, an estimated 200 to 250 people were killed, and the UN refugee agency counted about 170,000 displaced at the peak, and the country came to the brink of full civil war.

What pulled it back was intense international mediation by NATO, the European Union, and the United States, which pushed the two sides toward a political settlement rather than a fight to the finish. A NATO mission, Operation Essential Harvest, moved in to collect the insurgents’ weapons.

The Ohrid Framework Agreement

The war ended not with a winner but with a new social contract. On 13 August 2001, the country’s main Macedonian and Albanian parties signed the Ohrid Framework Agreement, one of the most consequential peace deals in the modern Balkans. It kept North Macedonia a single, unitary state, ruling out any partition, but in return it rebuilt the state around power-sharing between its two largest peoples.

The agreement brought sweeping changes: decentralization that handed real power to municipalities; equitable representation of Albanians and other communities in the police, army, courts, and public administration; a double-majority voting rule (often called the Badinter principle) so that laws touching on ethnic or cultural matters need the support of both communities; and official use of any language spoken by more than 20 percent of the population, which meant Albanian. In effect, Ohrid turned a majority-minority state into a shared one.

Language, Power, and a First

The years since have been a slow, often contentious working-out of that bargain. A milestone came in 2019, when a new Law on the Use of Languages made Albanian a second official language across the entire country, extending its use in the courts, parliament, and national institutions. The law was so divisive that President Gjorge Ivanov refused to sign it, and it took effect only after the Speaker of Parliament, the Albanian politician Talat Xhaferi, signed it into force (RFE/RL).

Ethnic Albanian parties have become permanent power-brokers in national politics, most prominently the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), founded by the former insurgent leader Ali Ahmeti, which sat in coalition governments for much of the period from 2002 to 2024. And in a moment few could have imagined during the war, in early 2024 Talat Xhaferi became the first ethnic Albanian prime minister in the country’s history, leading a caretaker government into the elections.

Where Albanians Live

Albanians are concentrated in the west and northwest. Their heartland is the Polog region around Tetovo and Gostivar, where whole municipalities are over 90 percent Albanian, running through Debar, Struga, and Kicevo in the west and into the western districts of the capital, Skopje, such as Saraj and Cair, and the Kumanovo area to the northeast. The map below shades each municipality by its Albanian share in the 2021 census.

Hover the map and the pattern is unmistakable: a solid Albanian-majority belt along the western border with Albania and Kosovo, thinning out toward the ethnically Macedonian east.

Notable Figures

The most famous person ever born in the country was, by her own account, Albanian. Mother Teresa, born Anjeza Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje in 1910 to an Albanian Catholic family, went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize and become a Catholic saint; in her own words, “By blood, I am Albanian.” In politics, the towering figures are the philosophy-trained party leader Arben Xhaferi, a leading advocate of Albanian rights and a negotiator and signatory of the Ohrid Agreement, and Ali Ahmeti, the insurgent commander turned long-serving kingmaker of North Macedonian politics. In sport, footballers such as Enis Bardhi and Ezgjan Alioski, both ethnic Albanians, have starred for the North Macedonia national team.

Featured Albanian Business Owners in North Macedonia

Albanian founders in North Macedonia include Arta Mustafa, CEO of the HR company Recrutiva, profiled in our featured business owner series.

Related: Prespa Albanians who settled in Melbourne; Albanians from western North Macedonia in Germany.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many Albanians live in North Macedonia?

The 2021 census counted 446,245 ethnic Albanians, about 24.3 percent of the population, the second-largest group after ethnic Macedonians.

Are Albanians native to North Macedonia?

Yes. They are an indigenous people who have lived in the western part of the country for centuries, not migrants. When the borders were drawn in 1912 to 1913, their lands were placed outside the new Albanian state.

What was the 2001 conflict about?

An ethnic Albanian insurgency demanding greater rights and representation. It ended after six months with the Ohrid Framework Agreement, which reorganized the country around power-sharing.

Is Albanian an official language in North Macedonia?

Yes. Since a 2019 law, Albanian is a second official language across the whole country, alongside Macedonian.

Was Mother Teresa Albanian?

Yes. She was born in Skopje in 1910 to an Albanian Catholic family and identified as Albanian throughout her life.

Sources

• State Statistical Office of North Macedonia, 2021 Census of Population, for the population and municipal figures
• Minority Rights Group: Albanians in North Macedonia
• The Ohrid Framework Agreement (2001)
• The 2001 insurgency in Macedonia
• The Congress of Manastir (1908)
• RFE/RL: Macedonia’s Albanian-Language Bill Becomes Law (2019)
• Balkan Insight: Ali Ahmeti, Rebel Turned Politician
• Wikipedia: Albanians in North Macedonia

Related Reading

• Albanians Around the World: The Global Diaspora
• The Congress of Manastir
• The League of Prizren
• The Kosovo War: A Complete History
• Is Kosovo Albanian?

More Albanian diaspora communities

• Albanians in Serbia
• Albanians in Italy
• Albanians in Croatia
• Albanians in Argentina
• Albanians Around the World

Author: Val Demiri

Valbona is an editor and writer at ALB Connection, where she covers the people, businesses, and culture shaping the Albanian diaspora. A journalism graduate of the University of Iowa, her work spans community profiles, success stories, and features on Albanian life across the US, Europe, and beyond. She is drawn to stories that celebrate Albanian achievement and keep the community connected across borders.