Australians are fleeing major cities at record rates, with heavily multicultural Sydney and Melbourne worst affected, new data shows.
A new report from the Regional Australia Institute (RAI) found that the number of Aussies leaving the country’s capital cities for rural areas is at its highest level since the RAI’s records began in 2021.
The institute’s latest Regional Movers Index (RMI), a joint initiative between the RAI and the Commonwealth Bank to track capital-to-rural population movements, shows that the RMI reached its highest-ever level in the first quarter of this year.
Capital city residents are moving to the regions at a rate 29.7% higher than those moving in the other direction, meaning for every three who moved from the country to the city there were four who left the cities for rural and regional areas.
This latest RMI figure was up 20.1% on the December 2025 quarter, and was 4.7% higher than the same time last year, with these figures further confirming a longer-term trend out of urban Australia that has been building since 2018.
Sydney and Melbourne accounted for over 90% of all city-leavers for the first quarter of this year, with Sydneysiders making up 55% of the total and Melburnians 36%.
But this combined figure was a decrease on last year’s number, with Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide also all seeing an increased share of net outflows, which the report said indicated “movement from capital cities is becoming increasingly broad-based”.
The Sunshine Coast in Queensland was the most popular receiving area with 8.8% of the total, followed by Greater Geelong and nearby Moorabool in Victoria, and Lake Macquarie in New South Wales.
Toowoomba in southern Queensland saw the strongest annual growth, with a 236% increase from the same time last year.
The data also revealed a widespread population increase right across rural Australia, and the reported noted “population growth emerging across a wider mix of regional communities, with growth hotspots now evident across most states.”
RAI chief executive Liz Ritchie said these results confirmed the enduring and increasing appeal of rural and regional living.
“This is the highest level of capital-to-regional movement the RMI has ever recorded. Australians are continuing to choose regional life in greater numbers, even as economic conditions shift,” she said.
“Across COVID, inflation, housing pressures and tight labour markets, the trend has been remarkably consistent – people are leaving capital cities for regions, and they’re doing so at increasing rates.”
The exodus comes after four years of record-high immigrant arrivals, primarily into capital cities, with over 30% of Australians now foreign-born and net overseas migration under the current Labor government forecast to exceed two million by the time of the next election.
Header image: Left, a crowded Melbourne tram (Reddit). Right, a Sikh parade in western Sydney (SBS Punjabi – Instagram)
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