2026 Changes To Ethnicity Standard Classification

The following changes have been included in the Ethnicity New Zealand Standard Classification 2005 V3.0.0 (ethnicity classification). This replaces V2.1.0 from 30 July 2026.

Summary of changes in V3.0.0

• 37 new categories – captures emerging ethnic groups in New Zealand.
• 48 reinstated categories – removed in the 2017 ethnicity classification update.
• 28 descriptor changes – removes technical terms (nfd and nec) that made it difficult for some users to understand the classification.
• Three other changes – a code split and a spelling change.

Detail of changes

New categories

The following 37 new categories have been added to the classification. These ethnicities were included within the scope of ‘nec’ (not elsewhere classified) categories in the previous classification version. Counts for these ethnicities have grown over time, indicating an emerging presence in New Zealand. While counts may be low, it is important for these communities to see themselves represented in total population counts.

Reinstated categories

The following 48 categories have been reinstated in the ethnicity classification. They were removed in the 2017 ethnicity classification update. The 2017 update focused on removing categories with zero counts over multiple censuses. While census may have recorded zero counts, agencies have told us that these categories are important to their collections where the counts are not zero.

Descriptor changes

Technical jargon has been removed from descriptors. The use of ‘nfd’ (not further defined) and ‘nec’ (not elsewhere classified) was not well understood by users of ethnicity data and caused confusion.

Nfd categories have historically captured vague responses, like ‘European’ or ‘British’. They are higher level than more detailed classification categories, like ‘Dutch’ or ‘Scottish’. These descriptors have been simplified to use plain language, for example, ‘European nfd’ is now ‘European no further detail’. The updated category will capture the same data, for example, responses of ‘Euro’, ‘European’, ‘Caucasian’, etc. Codes for nfd categories have been retained for time-series purposes.

Nec categories captured detailed responses that were not categorised in the classification, like ‘Frisian’ or ‘Scandinavian’. Categories such as ‘European nec’ have been relabelled to ‘Other European’. This does not change the scope or meaning of the category, it simply uses plain language. Codes for nec categories have been retained for time-series purposes.

Other changes

Other changes include a spelling change and a code split.

The category ‘Belorussian’ is updated to ‘Belarusian’ because this is now the preferred term.

The category ‘Israeli/Jewish’ has been split into two separate categories at the request of community groups. While the intention of the original category was to capture Israeli or Jewish responses, the split ensures more clarity over the coverage of the categories. Responses of ‘Israeli/Jewish’ will be coded to both new categories, in the same way other multi-responses are captured.