Records that became public on 1 January 2025

Happy New Year everybody! Many government records become public after 20, 25, 50, 75, or 100 years. Here is an overview of some of the records that became public as of 1 January 2025. Exceptions may exist for records that involve people that could still be alive.

Just because records are public does not mean they are immediately available online. Some archives digitize the birth, marriage, and death records immediately, others do not. Some records will be online, some may be ordered via scanning on demand, and others can only be consulted on-site in the archives.

Civil registration records

• Birth records from 1924
• Marriage records from 1949
• Divorce registrations from 1949
• Death records from 1974.

These records are typically available at local or regional archives and in the archives in the provincial capitals.

Legal records

• Court records from 1949, including divorces
• Notarial records from 1949
• Police records from 1949

These records are typically available at local or regional archives.

National government records

• Minutes of the council of ministers, 1999.
• Records dealing with the aftermath of World War II, including repatriation of Jews, eviction of Germans, investigations of Japanese war crimes, etc.
• Records dealing with the aftermath of the independence of Indonesia in 1948.
• Records relating to the start of the Cold War.
• Records leading up to the independence of Suriname in 1975.
• Records relating to the Bijlmer airplane crash of 1992.
• Royal Decrees from 1949, which includes pensions, marriage dispensations, naturalizations, etc.

These records are available at the National Archives in The Hague. See also the complete (Dutch) list of records that the National Archives made public.

Repatriation of Dutch troops after the independence of Indonesia. Credits: collection Spaarnestad, Nationaal Archief (public domain)