Irreligion, such as atheism and agnosticism, are present in Albania, along with the predominant faiths of Islam and Christianity. The majority of Albanians lead a secular life and reject religious considerations to shape or condition their way of life.
Irreligion in Albania arose after a period of rising anti-clericalism and secularisation in the context of the rising Albanian nationalism in the late Ottoman Empire. While authors in this period had at times used invective against religion, the first public advocate of abandoning religion itself was Ismet Toto in 1934 followed by works by Anastas Plasari in 1935. Beginning in 1946 under communist rule in Albania, religion was first curtailed, and then public religious practice was outlawed in 1967 with the adoption of state atheism by Enver Hoxha although some private practice survived, and remained so until restrictions were first eased in 1985 and then removed in 1990 under his successor Ramiz Alia. Polling by UNDP showed that large majorities of Albanians agree that nationalism, lack of religion and the ban of religion during communist rule have helped build the foundations of religious tolerance.
Nowadays, estimations of the size of the irreligious population vary widely. The self declared atheist population has been given figures ranging from 3.6% to 8% to 9% while other estimates of irreligiosity have reported figures of 39% declaring as "atheists"(9%) or "nonreligious"(30%), 61% not saying religion was "important" to their lives, and 72% "non-practicing". Many Albanians identified as Muslims or Christians have been found to practice only few or none of their faith's observances. Based on studies conducted in 2008, 2009 and 2015, Albania was found out to be the 20th least religious country in the world, with 39% of the population being religious.
Religious identity in Albania is typically assigned by attribution, usually by familial history, rather than actual practice. Despite widespread lack of religious practice, and while there are numerous public figures who openly declare themselves as atheists, there have also been complaints about negative public discourse toward atheists.
History
In the late Ottoman era, in order to overcome the religious divisions among Albanians between members of the local Sunni Muslim, Orthodox Christian, Bektashi Muslim and Roman Catholic Christian communities. Albanian nationalism, as it emerged, tended to urge Albanians to disregard religious differences, arguing that divisive sectarian religious fanaticism was alien to Albanian culture, and propagated what some historians refer to as a "'civic religion' of Albanianism".Duijzings, Ger. "Religion and the Politics of 'Albanianism'". In Schwandler-Stevens and Jurgen, Albanian Identities: Myth and History. Pages 61-62. Page 62: "nationalist rhetoric declared it [religion/millet] to be unimportant (and that religious fanaticism to be alien to the Albanian soul)", page 61:"From the beginning, national ideologists propagated a kind of 'civil religion' of Albanianism, which was epitomized in Vaso Pasha's famous and influential nationalist poem O moj Shqypni ("O poor Albania"): "Awaken, Albanians, wake from your slumber. Let us all be brothers, swear an oath not to mind church or mosque. The faith of the Albanian is Albanianism!'" Vaso Pasha's famous poem O moj Shqypni told Albanians to "swear an oath not to mind [lit. "look to"] church or mosque" because "the faith of the Albanian is Albanianism" ( or in ).
Albanian national revivalists in the 19th century such as Faik Konica, Jani Vreto and Zef Jubani were often anti-clerical in rhetoric (Konica said in 1897: "Every faith religion makes me puke", or ) but the first advocate of atheism in modern Albania is thought to have been Ismet Toto, a publicist and revolutionary whose 1934 anti-religious polemic, Grindje me Klerin ("Quarrel with the clergy "), was one of the first known works advocating against the practice of religion itself in the Albanian language. This was followed by Sëmundja Fetare ("The Disease of Religion"), another important anti-religious polemic by Anastas Plasari in 1935. The poem Blasfemi by Migjeni, who was considered to be an atheist by many, is also noted as being anti-religious. Another important figure before that time was the politician and mayor of Gjirokastër, Hysen Hoxha, the uncle of Enver Hoxha, who was considered to be a "Radical Atheist and anti-colonialist". His atheistic views influenced those of Enver Hoxha.
It noted his reign, Ahmet Zogu embraced the renaissance ideals of unity, areligiosity and European modernity, and turned them into the very ideology of the state.
During the communist era, Albania transitioned from a simple secular state to, in 1967, an entity upholding state atheism by which all public practice of religion was banned, although some private practice survived. The beginning of anti-religious policies implemented by the Communist Party of Albania was in August 1946, with the Agrarian Reform Law which nationalized most of the property of religious institutions, restricted the activity of religious institutions, and preceded the persecution of many clergy and believers and the expulsion of all foreign Catholic priests.
In 1967, Enver Hoxha took Pashko Vasa's poem literally, turning the struggle against the divisiveness of religious affiliations into a struggle against religion itself in order to replace the divisive allegiances of the different religious communities with a unifying loyalty to the Communist state,Duijzings, Ger. "Religion and the Politics of 'Albanianism'". In Schwandler-Stevens and Jurgen, Albanian Identities: Myth and History. Page 62-63: "Enver Hoxha took Pashko Vasa's motto literally and made Albania the first 'atheist' state in the world... the struggle against religious divisions evolved into a fight against religion per se, which aimed to replace the diverging allegiances to religious communities with one undivided loyalty to the Communist Party. In spite of Enver Hoxha's radical Stalinist outlook, it was nationalism which provided the backbone to his policies: his harsh treatment of religious communities should primarily be seen in this light." and he declared Albania an atheist state, in which public religious practice was prohibited. By May 1967, all 2,169 religious buildings in Albania were nationalized, with many converted into cultural centers. A major center for anti-religious propaganda was the National Museum of Atheism () in Shkodër, the city viewed by the government as the most religiously conservative. After the death of Enver Hoxha in 1985, his successor, Ramiz Alia, adopted a more tolerant stance toward religious practice, calling it as "a personal and family matter." Émigré clergymen were permitted to reenter the country in 1988 and officiate at religious services. Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, visited Tirana in 1989, where she was received by the foreign minister and by Hoxha's widow. In December 1990, the ban on religious observance was officially lifted, in time to allow thousands of Christians to attend Christmas services, although other sources report that official termination of the ban was in 1991.
In 2014, following a visit by Pope Francis to Albania, some intellectuals criticized what they perceived as negative rhetoric aimed at atheists, which increasingly linked atheism to "communist crimes" and spoke of atheism as "deficient", leading to complaints that the revival of an anti-atheist "taboo", among other issues.
Demography Prevalence of irreligion
Different surveys have produced considerably varying figures for size of the irreligious population of Albania. A simple majority of the population claimed "no religious alliance" in 1993 while the irreligious population was recorded at 74% in 1994 and more than 72% reported in 2005 as per religious practice (the remainder was 21% forms of Islam, 6% Orthodoxy and 3% Catholicism). In August 2012, Pew Research study found out that only 15 percent of the Muslim population for example, consider religion as a very important factor in their lives, which was the lowest percentage in the world amongst countries with significant Muslim populations.
A December 2024 survey by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) found that 41.5% of Albanians believe in God without following a specific religion (33.8%) or identify as atheist or agnostic (7.2%). Sunni Muslims make up 36.0% of the population, while 17.2% are Christians (7.9% Catholic, 8.0% Orthodox, and 1.3% Protestant or other Christian denominations). Additionally, 5.7% adhere to Bektashism (5.2%) or other Shia tariqas (0.5%).
Contemporary studies and official statistics suggest that irreligion has become an increasingly visible and diverse element of Albania’s religious landscape. Alongside the country’s recognised religious communities, a growing share of Albanians identify either explicitly as atheists or agnostics or as believers in God or in spiritual values without belonging to any specific religion or denomination. This spectrum of non-religious and non-denominational positions ranges from individuals who reject religious belief altogether to those who retain certain rituals, moral frameworks or cultural attachments while distancing themselves from organised religion. Surveys conducted since the 1990s generally converge in showing that a substantial portion of the population situates itself somewhere between formal religious affiliation and complete non-belief, contributing to comparatively high levels of secular or loosely defined religious identity by regional standards.
Available census data for 2011 and 2023, together with survey research, point to clear regional and social variations within this broader pattern. Non-religious and non-denominational identifications are most common in the coastal and south-central parts of the country and in larger urban centres such as Tirana, Durrës, Vlorë and Elbasan and their surrounding metropolitan areas, as well as in parts of Fier, Berat, Gjirokastër and Korçë counties, where migration, education and social change have tended to weaken older confessional boundaries. Earlier commune-level tabulations from the 2011 census also indicate that relatively high shares of atheists and unaffiliated believers were already present in several predominantly rural or small-town areas, including Gramsh and parts of Skrapar and Përmet, upland and rural communes in Vlorë County and the area around Gjirokastër, and several former industrial or cooperative zones in the Fier–Berat–Kuçovë lowlands. Some of these areas, particularly in parts of Skrapar, Përmet, Vlorë County and the Gjirokastër region, overlap with zones historically associated with strong Bektashi presence. These cases suggest that individualised or non-denominational belief is not confined to major cities. By contrast, the northern interior, particularly regions corresponding to Lezhë, Shkodër, Kukës and Dibër, tends to display lower levels of declared irreligion and more stable patterns of traditional religious affiliation, reflecting different historical trajectories and varying degrees of institutional resilience.