Finding your Czech ancestors

First, find the village, its parish and its archive

Czech records are filed by place: first the parish (farnost) that kept the registers, then the regional archive that now holds them. Before you search, you need the village's present Czech name, the parish it belonged to, and the region it is in.

Austria, then Czechoslovakia. Bohemia (Čechy, Böhmen), Moravia (Morava, Mähren) and Silesia (Slezsko, Schlesien) were Habsburg lands. In October 1918 the Czech lands of Austria became part of the new state of Czechoslovakia, and on 1 January 1993 the Czech Republic and Slovakia separated. A family paper from before 1918 may therefore say Austria or Austria-Hungary, not Bohemia.

German or Czech names. Registers from the Austrian period were written mostly in Latin and German, so a village may appear under its German name. The archive portals accept both: the Moravian archive's search takes the Czech, German or historical name of a municipality, and the Litoměřice and Opava portals let you enter the German or Czech form. The Austrian Gemeindelexikon of 1905 to 1908 (one volume each for Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, free on FamilySearch) indexes German and local names and lists the parish in an appendix.

Village or parish. Several small villages often belonged to one parish, and the registers are filed under the parish seat. Prague's regional archive, for example, lets you search its registers by locality or by parish seat. The Czech Statistical Office's Historical Lexicon of Municipalities lists every municipality and its parts from 1869 on, and traces the names of all municipalities and their parts, including names no longer used.

Which archive. Registers more than about 100 years old are in the regional archive for the area:

The East Bohemian archive now covers the Pardubice and Hradec Králové regions. Jewish registers are kept by the National Archives in Prague, and military registers by the Central Military Archive (Vojenský ústřední archiv).

Parish registers (matriky): the civil record until 1949

In the Czech lands the parish register (matrika) was the official record of births, marriages and deaths for more than 150 years. Joseph II's imperial patent of 20 February 1784 governed how the registers were kept; Catholic parish offices kept them, and later the parish offices of other churches and some state offices did too. This lasted until the end of 1949.

The matriky law of 1949 (No. 268/1949) came into force on 1 January 1950. From that day the registers were kept by the local national committees, and all church registers became state property. Today they are kept by the municipal registry offices (matriční úřad).

When a book moves to the archive. Under § 23 of the Registers Act (No. 301/2000), a registry office keeps each book, counting from its last entry:

• Births: 100 years
• Marriages and deaths: 75 years

After that the book goes to the competent regional state archive. Because the count starts at a book's last entry, a book that covers many years stays at the office until its newest entry is old enough. Transfers are still under way: the East Bohemian archive said in January 2026 that it is taking over all marriage and death registers kept to the end of 1949, to be completed by mid-2027, and that their scans will go online later.

Jewish registers. The registers of the Jewish religious communities, 1784 to 1949, are in the National Archives in Prague, which publishes its digitised volumes online. Birth entries are open when more than 100 years old, marriage and death entries when more than 75.

Read the registers online

Each regional archive publishes its scanned registers on its own portal (see the table above). Search for the village or the parish, open the book for the right years, and read the entry yourself.

• Central Bohemia: eBadatelna has the registers of the present Central Bohemian Region held by the Prague regional archive. Viewing needs no registration; a free account lets you download whole books.
• Moravia: Acta Publica holds the registers of the Moravian Land Archive in Brno. You search by municipality, under its Czech, German or historical name. FamilySearch notes that you must first register, free.
• North Bohemia: the Litoměřice archive's VadeMeCum shows the digitised Collection of Registers of the North Bohemian Region. The scans are for personal use only.
• West Bohemia: Porta fontium, built with the Bavarian State Archives, shows the Plzeň archive's registers, with a Czech or German interface.
• South Bohemia, East Bohemia, North Moravia and Silesia: the Třeboň DigiArchiv (Czech, English, German), the Hradec Králové archive's ARchiv ONline, and the Opava archive's VadeMeCum.

FamilySearch also has free images and some indexes in Czech Republic, Church Books, 1552-1981, from the Litoměřice, Opava, Třeboň and Zámrsk archives.

Do the reading yourself. Archives do little searching for private family history. The Moravian Land Archive does not make private searches in records it has already published online, and handles other requests as staff allow. The Litoměřice archive has not made genealogical searches for private purposes since 1 January 2015.

Newer records: the registry office (matriční úřad)

For a birth less than about 100 years ago, or a marriage or death less than 75, the book is still at the registry office (matriční úřad). Ask the office whose district includes the municipality where the event was registered.

What to ask for. A doslovný výpis is a word-for-word extract of the register entry, and the law allows it to be made as a copy of the entry. A matriční doklad (birth, marriage or death certificate) is the official certificate.

Who may ask.

• The person concerned and members of the family. The law defines them as the spouse, partner, parents, children, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
• Anyone, without proving a relationship, once the entry is more than 100 years old (births), 75 years (marriages) or 30 years (deaths).
• Someone who shows they need it to claim rights before Czech authorities, or to pursue legal claims abroad.

Fees. A doslovný výpis costs 30 CZK for the first A4 page and 10 CZK for each further page. A certificate (matriční doklad) costs 300 CZK. Looking at a specific entry in person costs 50 CZK, and a search 200 CZK for each hour or part of an hour.

From abroad. You can send a certificate request by post, giving the name, the date and place, and details of yourself and how you want it delivered. It can also be filed through a Czech embassy or consulate, which collects the fee, and the certificate can be delivered to the embassy. The office must decide within 30 days and usually answers within three weeks.

In Prague, the Prague 1 district office said in 2018 that it holds the birth, marriage and death registers kept up to 31 December 1949, and hands them to the Archive of the City of Prague once their time limits have passed.

Censuses, Prague registrations, land maps and military records

Censuses. The first true census was taken in 1857, then in 1869, 1880, 1890, 1900, 1910 and 1921. Some returns are lost. Where they survive, census returns up to 1921 are in the state district archives (státní okresní archiv); from 1930 they are in the National Archives. The 1869 returns record the place of birth. The Moravian Land Archive has put its district archives' returns from 1857 to 1921 online, and FamilySearch has census images and inhabitant registers from several regional archives. District archives also keep books of certificates of domicile (domovské listy) and population registers.

Prague police registrations, 1850 to 1918. The National Archives has digitised 664,651 residence registration forms (konskripce) of the Prague police directorate: they give the year and place of birth, the occupation and the household, and the database lists more than two million people.

Land maps. Joseph II ordered a land survey by patent of 20 April 1785; the resulting Josephine cadastre lasted only from 1789 to 1790. The stable cadastre, ordered by patent of 23 December 1817, was surveyed in Bohemia from 1826 to 1843 and in Moravia from 1824 to 1836. Its hand-coloured maps of every cadastral area, at 1:2,880, are kept by the Central Archive of Surveying and Cadastre; view them in the land office's Archive map application. The Moravian archive has a separate index of the survey's indication sketches, searchable by German and Czech cadastral name.

Military records. Czech consulates direct questions about military registers to the Central Military Archive (Vojenský ústřední archiv) in Prague. For soldiers born between about 1800 and 1864 in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, the Austrian personnel sheets (Grundbuchblätter) filmed at the Vienna War Archives give the year and place of birth and a record of service, but no family names.

Emigrants: where they went and how they were counted

FamilySearch notes that emigrants from Bohemia generally sailed to New York or other eastern ports and first settled in the Midwest, while many Moravians landed at Galveston and settled in Texas.

Before 1918 Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia were part of Austria, so the arrival tables have no Czech line before the 1920s: emigrants of that time are counted under Austria or Austria-Hungary. The official tables shown on this site's map count:

Figures: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2019, table 2; Australian Government, Department of Home Affairs, Historical Migration Statistics (November 2025); Historical Statistics of Switzerland online, table B.21. Each country uses its own definitions: compare with care.

Look first for the arrival record in the country where your ancestor landed: it often names the village, sometimes in its German form.

Writing to the matriční úřad or a regional archive

For a recent record, write to the matriční úřad whose district covers the municipality, and ask for a doslovný výpis (word-for-word extract) of the birth, marriage or death entry. Give the full name, the date and place, the parents' names, and say that you are a descendant, with proof of the relationship; if the entry is more than 100 years old (births), 75 (marriages) or 30 (deaths), no proof is needed. Ask the fee and how to pay it from abroad, or go through a Czech embassy or consulate. For older entries, first read the scans on the regional archive's portal: archives such as Brno's and Litoměřice's do not search for private family history. Write to the archive only to order a copy of an entry you have found, giving the parish, the book and the page; the Moravian Land Archive has a reproduction order form on its request forms page. Write your letter in Czech with our free generator.

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