Where People Are Moving To In Virginia In 2026
Virginians are voting with their moving trucks. The ballots keep landing in the same handful of counties. The state added more than 248,000 residents since the 2020 Census. Migration drove 68.5 percent of that gain. Much of it was people relocating within Virginia itself. New Kent County alone grew a remarkable 21.5 percent over five years. The counties ringing Richmond and Washington and Hampton Roads are absorbing the movement. Cheaper land and shorter commutes pull the moving trucks their way.
The pattern is broad. Between 2020 and 2025, 93 of Virginia's 133 localities gained population and 119 recorded positive net migration. Metro areas still hold 97.6 percent of the statewide growth. The eight places below gained residents fastest, and IRS county-to-county data covering 2022 and 2023 shows where their new neighbors came from.
New Kent County
No Virginia locality grew faster by percentage. New Kent jumped 21.5 percent, from 22,945 residents in 2020 to 27,872 in 2025, a gain of 4,927 people in a county that still reads as rural in most of its acreage. The growth is Richmond's. IRS records show roughly two-thirds of New Kent's recent movers came from elsewhere in Virginia, led by neighboring Henrico County, with James City County and Chesterfield close behind.
Those origins map onto the geography exactly. New Kent sits along Interstate 64 between Richmond and Williamsburg, which lets a household reach either job market without paying to live in either downtown. Public money is following the households. The state committed $20 million to the I-64 Exit 211 interchange, one piece of a $94 million effort tied to New Kent City Center, distribution warehouses, and the Farms of New Kent mixed-use project.
The strain shows on the ground. Subdivisions, warehouses, and road crews now share a landscape that long held farms and woods, and commuter traffic has thickened on roads built for far fewer cars. For the people moving in, the trade is space and access. For county leaders, it is a race to keep schools and services ahead of the rooftops.
Falls Church City
Falls Church grew the way a built-out place grows, from the inside. The independent city added 2,398 residents for a 16.4 percent increase, reaching 17,056 in 2025. With almost no room to expand its 2.2 square miles, the gain came through infill and redevelopment rather than new ground. Its movers are Northern Virginia neighbors trading down in distance to Washington. Fairfax County sent the most, followed by Arlington, and in-state arrivals made up well over half of the city's domestic inflow.
The West Falls project is the engine. The large redevelopment folds together apartments, a hotel, senior living, retail, and civic space on a single site near the West Falls Church Metro. Several buildings opened in 2024, and senior-housing construction started in 2025.
People choose Falls Church for the things a small city inside a transit network can offer at once. A Metro ride to federal jobs, sidewalks that go somewhere, and a civic identity that fits inside a few square miles. Where most of Virginia's fast growth is happening on open county land, Falls Church is adding residents by stacking them near a train.
Goochland County
Goochland's 15.0 percent rise, from 24,727 residents to 28,432, makes it the cleanest case of Richmond growth pushing due west. Four in five of its recent movers stayed inside Virginia, and the single largest source was Henrico County next door, with Chesterfield and the city of Richmond filling out the list. This is suburban spillover with a tax address change attached.
Jobs are arriving alongside the houses. The West Creek Business Park spreads across 3,500 acres just over the Henrico line, zoned for offices, retail, and light industry, with links to Route 288, I-64, I-95, Richmond International Airport, and the Port of Richmond.
Then came the anchor that changes the county's profile. In 2025, Eli Lilly committed to a $5 billion manufacturing plant at West Creek, with 650 permanent jobs and 1,800 construction jobs attached. A county that read as a commuter outpost is turning into a place where the jobs, the housing, and the Richmond connection sit in the same square miles.
Louisa County
Louisa added 4,822 residents for a 12.8 percent gain, climbing to 42,418. Its position between Richmond and Charlottesville gives movers two job markets and a tank of gas to either, and the IRS numbers reflect that pull. Seventy-nine percent of its recent arrivals came from elsewhere in Virginia, with Orange, Fluvanna, and Spotsylvania counties leading. Lake access and large rural lots do the rest of the convincing.
Zion Crossroads is where the county steers that demand. Louisa treats it as a gateway, wiring it for mixed-use and residential building with water, sewer, natural gas, and high-speed internet already in place. Its I-64 ramp is the selling point for commuters splitting the difference between two cities.
Lake Anna pulls a different kind of mover. The county has marked the Route 208 corridor around the lake for steady low-density growth, the sort that comes with a boat trailer rather than a commute. Between the two, Louisa runs on a split appeal. Highway practicality at Zion Crossroads and lifestyle at one of Virginia's best-known inland lakes.
Caroline County
Caroline grew 11.7 percent, adding 3,622 residents to reach 34,509. Sitting on I-95 between Richmond and the Fredericksburg-Washington corridor, it catches households priced out of the busier markets on either side. Its movers prove the point. The top in-state source was Spotsylvania County to the north, with Stafford County and the city of Fredericksburg close behind, and four out of five recent arrivals came from within Virginia.
Transportation is the county's whole pitch. Caroline counts four I-95 interchanges, a short hop to Richmond International Airport, and freight reach to the ports at Newport News and Baltimore. It has also approved 10,000 homes in upscale communities, which leaves the growth plenty of runway.
The economic base is shifting too. In 2025, CleanArc Data Centers announced a $3 billion campus in the county, which state officials called the largest investment in Caroline's history. The deal hardens the county's identity as a low-density but well-placed point on Virginia's I-95 spine.
Suffolk
Among Virginia's cities, Suffolk is the standout. It grew 10.5 percent to 104,251 residents, and its own FY 2025-2026 profile names it the fastest-growing city in Hampton Roads with more expansion projected for decades. The movers are mostly its own regional neighbors. Chesapeake sent the most, then Portsmouth and Virginia Beach, and two-thirds of Suffolk's recent arrivals came from elsewhere in Virginia. People are moving across Hampton Roads, not into it.
Suffolk has the one thing its neighbors mostly lack, which is room. Its footprint mixes suburban subdivisions, working farmland, industrial tracts, and a tie to the region's port economy, and the comprehensive plan steers new building toward designated areas with infrastructure to match.
Industry is part of the draw. The city's economic-development office points to port-linked logistics projects like the Coastal Logistics Center and Virginia Commerce Center, served by interstates, freight rail, and port terminals. The same access that brings the warehouses brings the workers who staff them.
Frederick County
Frederick added 9,411 residents for a 10.3 percent gain, reaching 100,830. The growth is part of a wider surge around Winchester, the fastest-growing Virginia metro by percentage at 9.5 percent over the same five years. Its newcomers stayed close to home. The city of Winchester, which the county wraps around, sent the most movers, followed by Loudoun and Fairfax counties to the east, and in-state arrivals made up about two-thirds of the domestic inflow.
The county sits in the northern Shenandoah Valley, near enough to the Washington region to draw its commuters and far enough out to offer a different housing math. Its economic-development office pitches a community of more than 120,000 people about 90 minutes from Washington, with a labor pool topping 360,000 within reach.
Roadwork underpins it all. Virginia's I-81 Corridor Improvement Program is spending along the 325-mile route to ease congestion and back economic growth. Frederick sits near the corridor's northern end, where those upgrades matter to commuters, freight haulers, manufacturers, and the Winchester economy at large.
Chesterfield County
Chesterfield posted the largest raw gain on the list. It added 36,753 residents for a 10.1 percent increase, climbing to 401,301, which is the most populous locality here by a wide margin. The flows are pure Richmond overflow. The city of Richmond sent the most movers by far, with Henrico County second and Petersburg third, and two-thirds of recent arrivals came from within Virginia.
The county's pull is its range. Settled neighborhoods, fresh subdivisions, schools, parks, and job centers, all within reach of Richmond and none of it inside the city limits. The strength is regional as much as local. The Richmond metro added 87,940 residents over the five years, a 6.7 percent rise that Chesterfield captured a large slice of.
A marquee employer gives the trend staying power. LEGO's plant in Chesterfield is slated for more than 1.7 million square feet across 13 buildings and upward of 1,700 jobs over a decade, with a regional distribution center planned to feed its North American network.
Other Virginia Growth Pockets To Watch
Several places landed just outside the top group but moved real numbers. Loudoun County added 25,720 residents, Prince William added 19,652, Henrico added 15,893, the city of Richmond added 14,868, Stafford added 11,592, and Spotsylvania added 10,914. The tally confirms that Northern Virginia, Greater Richmond, and the Fredericksburg corridor remain the state's heaviest destinations for new residents.
Orange and Culpeper counties are the ones to watch next. Both sit in the exurban band that fills the gaps between Northern Virginia, Fredericksburg, Charlottesville, and the Piedmont. Orange grew 8.6 percent and Culpeper 8.1 percent, a sign that the state's growth is reaching past the big suburban counties into smaller markets that still have highway access and open land.
What The Map Is Telling Virginians
The through-line in the IRS data is that Virginia is largely moving within itself. The fastest-growing counties are filling up with people from the metro next door, not the coast next state over, and the rural and exurban localities are pulling 79 to 81 percent of their movers from inside Virginia. Richmond's overflow is reshaping New Kent, Goochland, Louisa, and Chesterfield. Hampton Roads is redistributing into Suffolk's open land, the Washington region is feeding Falls Church and Frederick, and the Fredericksburg corridor is spilling into Caroline. For anyone already living in these growth zones, the math points one way. More competition for housing, fuller roads on the commuter corridors, and school districts that will keep straining to build ahead of the moving trucks.
