Albanians in Australia: Population, History, and Community

At the 2021 census, 19,686 people in Australia reported Albanian ancestry and 3,633 people had been born in Albania, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. About two-thirds of the people with Albanian ancestry (12,853) lived in Victoria, mainly in Melbourne’s suburbs and around Shepparton, and 10,851 people across Australia spoke Albanian at home. The settled community traces its start to 29 October 1924, when five men from the Korçë region of Albania landed at Fremantle.

This guide covers the official figures, where Albanian Australians live, and a century of history.

Është pjesë e jonë Shqiptarët në mbarë botën seri.

Fakte të shkurtra: Shqiptarët në Australi

• Population (2021 census): 19,686 people reported Albanian ancestry, 3,633 people were born in Albania, and 10,851 spoke Albanian at home.
• Ku jetojnë: Above all Victoria (12,853 people of Albanian ancestry in 2021), in Melbourne and around Shepparton, with smaller communities in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.
• Origjinat kryesore: In Victoria in 2016, most people of Albanian ancestry were Australian-born; the largest groups born overseas came from North Macedonia and Albania, followed by Kosovo and Montenegro.
• Rrënjë të thella: The first recorded Albanian settler arrived in Brisbane in 1885, and the present community traces its beginnings to five men who landed at Fremantle in 1924.
• Besimi: Mixed. Among people born in Albania in 2021, 33.1 percent reported no religion, 27.1 percent Islam, 19.5 percent Catholic and 11.9 percent Eastern Orthodox.

Në këtë faqe

• Sa shqiptarë jetojnë në Australi?
• Albanian Australians by State (2021 Census)
• Një shekull me Shqiptarë Australianë
• Timeline: Albanians in Australia, 1885 to 2021
• Ku jetojnë shqiptarët në Australi
• Komuniteti dhe Jeta e Përditshme
• Albanian Organizations, Mosques and Media in Australia
• Albanian Australians in Public Life and Sport
• Pyetje të shpeshta

Sa shqiptarë jetojnë në Australi?

The Australian census asks three questions that bear on this, and each gives a different number. These are the 2021 census figures, the most recent published:

• Ancestry: 19,686 people reported Albanian ancestry. People can give up to two ancestries, so this includes people who also gave another one, such as Australian (ABS; Department of Home Affairs).
• Country of birth: 3,633 people were born in Albania, an increase of 26.7 percent on the 2016 census; 2,501 of them were Australian citizens (Department of Home Affairs; ABS).
• Gjuha: 10,851 people spoke shqip at home (ABS).

The ancestry figure is the closest official answer to how many Albanian Australians there are. It counts only people who wrote Albanian as an ancestry, so ethnic Albanians born in North Macedonia, Kosovo or Montenegro are included only if they described themselves that way. Albanian community associations believe the census under-reports their numbers, according to a 2019 study by James Barry and Ihsan Yilmaz, but we found no published estimate with a stated method, so the census figures are the only count given here.

Many Albanian Australians were born in Australia. In Victoria in 2016, 55.4 percent of the people reporting Albanian ancestry had been born in Australia (Victorian Government community profile).

Albanian Australians by State (2021 Census)

Victoria is home to about two-thirds of the people with Albanian ancestry and almost three-quarters of those who speak Albanian at home. South Australia has the second-largest group of people born in Albania.

Burimet: ABS, Cultural diversity data summary, 2021 (ancestry and language); Department of Home Affairs, Albania-born Community Information Summary (country of birth). The ABS makes small random adjustments to protect confidentiality, so state figures may not add exactly to the national total.

Një shekull me Shqiptarë Australianë

The first recorded Albanian to settle in Australia, Naum Konxha, arrived in Brisbane in 1885 with his English wife, according to the Department of Home Affairs. The community proper took shape in the Vitet 1920 dhe 1930, when almost all Albanian migrants to Australia came from the Korçë district of south-eastern Albania (Barry and Yilmaz). They were mostly young single men. Some worked on cotton, tobacco and sugar cane farms in Queensland; others worked on the Melbourne docks or ran cafes, milk bars and fruit shops. In Victoria many pooled their savings to buy land and became market gardeners and orchardists, mbi të gjitha në Lugina e Goulburn rreth Shepparton, and also around Werribee and in the Yarra Valley (Immigration Museum).

After the Second World War, Albania’s communist government restricted emigration until the 1990s, so only a small number of refugees arrived from Albania itself (Home Affairs). The larger post-war flow came from Albanians in Yugoslavia, especially the Prespa region of what is now Maqedonia e Veriut, who came in large numbers in the 1960s and 1970s and settled mainly in Melbourne’s industrial suburbs such as Dandenong, Footscray, St Albans, Preston, Thomastown and Lalor (Immigration Museum). From the 1990s, the end of communism in Albania reopened migration and family reunion, and in 1999 Australia gave temporary refuge to Kosovar Albanians during the Lufta e Kosovës. Today third-generation Albanian Australians live alongside recent arrivals.

Timeline: Albanians in Australia, 1885 to 2021

Ku jetojnë shqiptarët në Australi

Komuniteti është i përqendruar në Viktoria, e ndarë midis periferive të Melburn and the historic rural community around Shepparton. In the 2016 census, the Victorian council areas with the most people of Albanian ancestry were Greater Dandenong, Brimbank, Whittlesea, Casey, Greater Shepparton, Wyndham and Melton (see the table further down). Among people born in Albania, the suburbs with the largest numbers included Lalor, Epping and Thomastown in Melbourne’s north, Dandenong and Keysborough in the south-east, and Shepparton and Kialla in the Goulburn Valley (Victorian Government). Outside Victoria, the 2021 census counted 2,323 people of Albanian ancestry in New South Wales, 1,702 in Queensland, 1,348 in South Australia and 1,166 in Western Australia (ABS). The map shows the state pattern.

Komuniteti dhe Jeta e Përditshme

The long history has left a deep institutional footprint. Shepparton’s Albanians laid the foundation stone of the first Albanian mosque in Victoria in 1956 and opened it in 1960 (Immigration Museum); the Shepparton News describes it as the first mosque in Victoria. In Melbourne, the Albanian Australian Islamic Society, formed in 1963, opened the Albanian Mosque in Carlton North in 1969, the first mosque in Melbourne (Immigration Museum; Open House Melbourne; Mosqpedia). Later arrivals built places of worship in Dandenong and Preston, and the community runs Albanian Sunday language classes, soccer clubs and welfare associations. In faith the community reflects the religious mix of Albania: the early Muslim migrants were strongly influenced by the Bektashi tradition, and there are Catholic and Orthodox Albanians as well as many who report no religion. Albanian National Day on 28 November, which marks Albania’s 1912 declaration of independence and is commonly called Flag Day, and the end of Ramadan have long been focal points of community life.

Albanian Organizations, Mosques and Media in Australia

Most of the community’s institutions are in Victoria. These are organizations and places whose history is documented in the sources below:

• Albanian Moslem Society, Shepparton: founded in 1955 (Barry and Yilmaz). Its mosque, whose foundation stone was laid in 1956 and which opened in 1960, was the first mosque in Victoria (Immigration Museum).
• Albanian Australian Islamic Society, Melbourne: formed in 1963; it opened the Albanian Mosque (Xhamia Shqiptare) in Carlton North in 1969, Melbourne’s first mosque. The idea for it grew out of “Albania House”, known as “the Club”, a meeting place for Melbourne Albanians (Immigration Museum).
• Later mosques: following the earlier generation’s example, later migrants built places of worship where they settled, such as Dandenong and Preston (Immigration Museum).
• Albanian Catholic Society: members met Mother Teresa in Fitzroy, Melbourne, in 1974, according to a photograph in the Immigration Museum’s Kurbet exhibition. The same exhibition notes that, without Albanian churches or Albanian-speaking clergy, Catholic and Orthodox Albanians have mostly worshipped in existing parishes (Immigration Museum).
• Albanian Australian Women’s Association: active in Melbourne since at least the early 1990s, with fundraising for children’s hospital and cancer appeals; it co-developed the Kurbet exhibition with the Immigration Museum in 2007 (Immigration Museum).
• Soccer clubs and Sunday schools: the community set up soccer clubs across Melbourne and Albanian Sunday language classes from the 1960s (Immigration Museum).
• Albanian-language radio: Albanian programs have been broadcast on Melbourne’s 3EA, the forerunner of SBS radio, for many years, and SBS Albanian still publishes news and interviews for the community today.

Community festivals are a fixture of the calendar: Melbourne’s Albanian festival reached its 27th edition in 2019 (SBS Albanian), and Shepparton’s Albanians have taken part in the town’s harvest festival (SBS). For how the day itself is marked, see our guide to 28 Nëntori, Albania’s Independence and Flag Day.

Why Australia: The 1924 Turning Point

For early Albanian emigrants, the usual destination was the United States, a story told in our history of Albanians in America. When the United States restricted migration from southern Europe with its Immigration Act of 1924, some of that movement turned toward Australia instead (Barry and Yilmaz). On 29 October 1924, five men from the Korçë region disembarked together at Fremantle, Western Australia, and Melbourne’s Immigration Museum traces the beginnings of the present community to them: Bektash Muharem, Bejxhet Emini, Rexhep Mustafa, Musa Ibrahimi and Riza Ali.

The 1933 census counted 770 people born in Albania, mostly in Queensland and Victoria. According to the Department of Home Affairs, many Muslim Albanians settled around Mareeba in northern Queensland, most Christian Albanians settled in Brisbane, and in Victoria most settled around Shepparton in the Goulburn Valley fruit-growing district. Photographs collected by the Immigration Museum show Albanian families growing cotton at Biloela and tobacco at Mareeba in Queensland, and vegetables on a farm at York in Western Australia. In the late 1930s, newspaper reports put the number of Albanians in the Shepparton area at 300 to 500 (Barry and Yilmaz).

The War Years: Enemy Aliens and Volunteers

The Second World War put the young community in a difficult position. Italy invaded Albania in 1939, and when Italy entered the war in 1940, Albanians in Australia were labelled enemy aliens, even though many in Shepparton had publicly rejected Italian rule and rushed to apply for British naturalisation (Barry and Yilmaz).

The consequences varied by region. In Shepparton, Albanians working in primary production were exempt from internment, but as enemy aliens they faced a firearms ban and needed police permission to travel (Barry and Yilmaz). In Queensland, particularly the north, some Albanian men were taken off farms and interned, and the Immigration Museum’s photographs show Albanian internees at the Monto camp (Immigration Museum). More than thirty Albanian-born men enlisted in the Australian army, serving at home and in the Pacific, and at least two died on active service. In 1944, Albanians in Australia were reclassified as friendly aliens (Barry and Yilmaz).

After the war, the communist government in Albania cut most ties with the West. Albanians who had gone home in the years around the war could not return to Australia, and only a small number of refugees from Albania arrived (Immigration Museum; Home Affairs). In Shepparton, the community founded the Albanian Moslem Society in 1955 (Barry and Yilmaz).

Operation Safe Haven: Kosovo Refugees in 1999

In 1999, under Operation Safe Haven, 3,920 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo were flown to Australia from refugee camps in what is now Maqedonia e Veriut. They arrived in 11 groups over six weeks, beginning on 7 May 1999 (Department of Health).

The arrivals were first received at the East Hills Reception Centre in Sydney and then housed in eight Haven Centres in five states (Department of Health); Immigration Museum photographs show centres at Puckapunyal and Portsea in Victoria and Bandiana near Albury-Wodonga. The visas were temporary, and SBS reports that nearly all of the refugees had returned home by April 2000 (SBS). According to Melbourne’s Immigration Museum, around 500 were able to settle in Australia permanently, with help from Albanian community associations.

What the Census Shows: Victoria in Detail

The Victorian government publishes a detailed community profile drawn from Australian Bureau of Statistics census data, and it gives the clearest picture available of where Albanian Victorians live. In the 2016 census, 10,643 ancestry responses in Victoria were Albanian, up from 8,971 in 2011, a rise of 18.6 percent in five years. The table shows the council areas with the most responses.

The same profile shows how Australian this community has become. More than half of Victorians reporting Albanian ancestry in 2016 were born in Australia (55.4 percent). Another 14.8 percent were born in North Macedonia, 14.5 percent in Albania, 5.1 percent in Kosovo and 1.6 percent in Montenegro.

The Albania-born group is smaller and much more recent. Australia counted 2,870 Albania-born residents in 2016, and 58.6 percent of them lived in Victoria, followed by South Australia (13.1 percent), New South Wales (11.0 percent), Queensland (9.0 percent) and Western Australia (6.9 percent). Of the 1,681 Albania-born people in Victoria, 45.3 percent had arrived between 2001 and 2010, and another 21.3 percent between 2011 and the 2016 census.

Language and Faith in the Numbers

Albanian remains a living household language. Among Albania-born Victorians in 2016, 75.2 percent spoke Albanian at home, and 6,834 people across Victoria did so in total. Nationally, the 2021 census recorded 10,851 people using Albanian as their household language, including 2,436 of the people born in Albania (Home Affairs).

On religion, the Albania-born in Victoria answered in 2016 as follows: 36.0 percent Islam, 34.0 percent no religion, 12.0 percent Eastern Orthodox and 8.0 percent Catholic. The share reporting no religion had risen from 19.5 percent in 2011. Nationally in 2021, the largest answers among the Albania-born were no religion (1,202 people), Islam (984) and Catholic (707). For comparison with a much smaller neighbor across the Tasman, see our guide to Shqiptarët në Zelandën e Re.

Albanian Australians in Public Life and Sport

Shepparton Today

The Albanian Moslem Society of Shepparton describes a local community of more than 3,000 people with Albanian heritage, and says that more than 90 percent of them still trace their origins to Korçë and its surrounding villages. The society dates a second wave of arrivals to the mid-1990s. Its mosque, which the Shepparton News describes as the first mosque in Victoria, was established in 1960.

Civic Leadership

Albanian Australians have also moved into civic leadership. Jim Memeti, who is of Albanian descent, has served six terms as mayor of the City of Greater Dandenong between 2010 and 2025 (City of Greater Dandenong; Dandenong Star Journal). Dinny Adem was mayor of Greater Shepparton in 2017 (SBS), and when Shane Sali became mayor in 2022, SBS Albanian reported that he was the second Albanian to hold the post. In November 2024, a Parliamentary Friends of Albania group was launched at Parliament House in Canberra (Dandenong Star Journal).

Sport

In sport, Adem Yze, who started out in the Goulburn Valley League, was one of the first footballers of Albanian heritage to reach the Australian Football League. He played 271 games and kicked 234 goals for Melbourne between 1995 and 2008 (AFL Tables) and was named All-Australian in 2002. He was later inducted into the Greater Shepparton Sports Hall of Fame (Shepparton News). For more names, see our list of shqiptarë të famshëm.

The ties to the homeland remain practical. After the November 2019 earthquake in Albania, Albanian associations in Australia raised more than 255,000 dollars for the victims within two weeks, SBS Albanian reported on 10 December 2019.

Pyetje të shpeshta

Sa shqiptarë jetojnë në Australi?

At the 2021 census, 19,686 people reported Albanian ancestry, 3,633 were born in Albania, and 10,851 spoke Albanian at home, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Department of Home Affairs. Albanian community associations believe the census under-counts them, but the census figures are the only official count.

Ku jetojnë shumica e australianëve shqiptaro-amerikanë?

In Victoria, which was home to 12,853 of the 19,686 people with Albanian ancestry in 2021, split between Melbourne’s suburbs and the Shepparton area. New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia each had more than 1,000.

Kur erdhën shqiptarët në Australi?

The first recorded Albanian settler arrived in Brisbane in 1885, and the present community traces its beginnings to five men from the Korçë region who landed at Fremantle on 29 October 1924. Most pre-war migrants came from the Korçë district; Albanians from the Prespa region of today’s North Macedonia followed in large numbers in the 1960s and 1970s, and Kosovar refugees arrived in 1999.

Çfarë është komuniteti shqiptar i Sheppartonit?

A historic Albanian community in the Goulburn Valley of Victoria, established by orchardists and market gardeners from the mid-1920s. Its mosque, opened in 1960, is described by the Shepparton News as the first mosque in Victoria, and the local Albanian society says more than 3,000 people in the community can claim Albanian heritage.

How many people speak Albanian in Australia?

At the 2021 census, 10,851 people spoke Albanian at home, 7,894 of them in Victoria. Among people born in Albania, 2,436 spoke Albanian at home.

How many people in Australia were born in Albania?

3,633 at the 2021 census, up 26.7 percent from 2016. Victoria had 2,091 of them, followed by South Australia (558), New South Wales (399) and Queensland (326).

How many Albanians live in Sydney?

The census summary we use reports states, not cities. In 2021, New South Wales had 2,323 people of Albanian ancestry, 399 people born in Albania and 988 people who spoke Albanian at home, far fewer than Victoria. We did not find a published figure for Greater Sydney alone.

What religion are Albanian Australians?

The community is mixed. Among people born in Albania, the 2021 census recorded 1,202 with no religion, 984 Muslims and 707 Catholics, plus a smaller Eastern Orthodox group. The older community from Korçë and the Prespa region is mostly Muslim and built Victoria’s first mosques in Shepparton (1960) and Carlton North (1969).

Is Adem Yze Albanian?

Adem Yze, who played 271 AFL games for Melbourne between 1995 and 2008, is of Albanian heritage and grew up in the Goulburn Valley around Shepparton, the historic center of Albanian settlement in Victoria.

Is there Albanian-language media in Australia?

Yes. SBS, the national multicultural broadcaster, runs an Albanian-language service with news and interviews, continuing Albanian programs that began on Melbourne’s ethnic radio station 3EA, now part of SBS.

Where do Albanians live in Melbourne?

In the 2016 census, the Melbourne council areas with the most people of Albanian ancestry were Greater Dandenong, Brimbank, Whittlesea, Casey, Wyndham and Melton. The Albanian Mosque in Carlton North, opened in 1969, was Melbourne’s first mosque.

Burimet

• Australian Bureau of Statistics: Census of Population and Housing, Cultural diversity data summary, 2021
• Australian Government Department of Home Affairs: Albania-born Community Information Summary (2021 Census)
• Victorian Government, Department of Premier and Cabinet: Victorian Community Profiles, 2016 Census, Albania-born
• Australian Government Department of Health: Operation Safe Haven, an evaluation of health surveillance and monitoring in an acute setting
• Albanian Moslem Society Shepparton: History
• Shepparton News: Facelift for Victoria’s first mosque
• Shepparton News: Sports Hall of Fame, Adem Yze
• Immigration Museum (Museums Victoria): Kurbet, the continuing journey of Albanians in Victoria (2007)
• James Barry and Ihsan Yilmaz: Liminality and racial hazing of Muslim migrants, Albanians in Shepparton, 1930-1955 (Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2019)
• SBS News: Kosovo and Syria, then and now (2015)
• Open House Melbourne: Albanian Mosque, Carlton North
• Mosqpedia: Carlton Islamic Centre
• City of Greater Dandenong: Cr Jim Memeti
• Dandenong Star Journal: Friends group in high places, Mayor Memeti meets PM (2024)
• SBS: Shepparton Albanian Harvest Festival, interview with Myqerem Sherolli and Dinny Adem (2017)
• SBS Albanian: Një i ri shqiptar në krye të Bashkisë së Sheparton në Australi (2022)
• SBS Albanian: Festivali i 27-të Shqiptar në Melburn (2019)
• AFL Tables: Adem Yze
• SBS Albanian

Lexime të Ngjashme

• Shqiptarët në mbarë botën: Diaspora globale
• Bektashinjtë: Tradita Sufi e Shqipërisë
• Shqiptarët në Kanada
• Lufta e Kosovës: Një histori e plotë
• Shqiptarët në Zelandën e Re
• Shqiptarët në Maqedoninë e Veriut
• Korçë, Albania: Travel Guide
• Shqiptarët në Gjermani

Autor: Val Demiri

Valbona është redaktore dhe shkrimtare në ALB Connection, ku ajo mbulon njerëzit, bizneset dhe kulturën që formësojnë diasporën shqiptare. E diplomuar në gazetari në Universitetin e Ajovës, puna e saj përfshin profile të komunitetit, histori suksesi dhe reportazhe mbi jetën shqiptare në të gjithë SHBA-në, Evropën dhe më gjerë. Ajo tërhiqet nga historitë që festojnë arritjet e shqiptarëve dhe e mbajnë komunitetin të lidhur përtej kufijve.