Fairfax County gained 2,895 residents who identify as Hispanic from 2024 to 2025, as first reported by WTOP, citing U.S. Census estimates. The increase was the largest in Northern Virginia and part of a demographic wave reshaping the D.C. region.

Roughly one in five D.C.-area residents now identifies as Hispanic, up from fewer than one in 10 in 2000. The county is home to more than 210,000 Hispanic and Latino residents, a figure the Board of Supervisors cited in a Sept. 16 proclamation opening Hispanic Heritage Month. The Dranesville supervisor district, which includes McLean and Great Falls, had 133,421 total residents as of January 2025, according to county demographic reports. No Hispanic sub-count for the district has been published.

The driver behind the numbers is shifting. Hamilton Lombard is the estimates program manager at the University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. He told WTOP the growth used to come from young adults born outside the U.S. who moved to the D.C. area for work. Now it comes from U.S.-born families and children born in the region with a parent who identifies as Hispanic.

"It used to be that the population was heavily concentrated in a few localities, and now the Hispanic population is extremely widespread," Lombard said.

Most households in the region with a U.S.-born Hispanic person have a partner who is not Hispanic, Lombard said. Three-quarters of children from a U.S.-born Hispanic parent speak only English.

Northern Virginia has a large Salvadoran population and a significant South American community, Lombard said. Nationally, more than half of people who identify as Hispanic trace their origin to Mexico. In the D.C. area, that share is 15%.

At the Sept. 16 Board of Supervisors meeting, Chairman Jeff McKay read the Hispanic Heritage Month proclamation and honored Maria Demarest. Demarest, a parent liaison at Bailey's Primary Elementary School, has spent nearly four decades working with families in the Fairfax County school system. She said she dedicated the declaration to the Latino community of Fairfax County and beyond.

Lombard said the growth trend is likely to continue. National Hispanic Heritage Month runs through Thursday, Oct. 15.