Most inhabitants of Cape Verde are mestiços, descendants of enslaved Africans and white Portuguese settlers. Mestiços’ European ancestors also include Spanish and Italian seamen who were granted land by Portuguese Empire and followed by Portuguese settlers and exiles and Portuguese Jews who were victims of the Inquisition. The remainder includes mostly black Africans or Europeans (most Portuguese left the country after independence). Many foreigners from other parts of the world settled Cape Verde as their permanent country. Most of them were Dutch, French, British (English), Arabs and Jews (from Lebanon and Morocco), Chinese (especially from Macau), Americans, and Brazilians (including people of Portuguese and African descent) settlers. All of these have been absorbed into the mestiço population.

More Cape Verdeans live abroad than in Cape Verde, with significant emigrant Cape Verdean communities in the United States (500,000 Cape Verdeans), Portugal (80,000) and Angola (45,000). There are also significant number of Cape Verdeans in São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, France, Brazil and the Netherlands. Cape Verdean populations also settled Spain, Germany, and other CPLP countries (Brazil and Guinea-Bissau).