This article shows the geographical dimensions of Slovene emigration around the world from the middle of the nineteenth century to now. During the period 1857–1871 approximately 544,000 people emigrated from Slovenia and of those, more than half left before World War I. Such a population loss places Slovenia among those European countries which suffered the greatest damage on account of emigration. The beginnings of the mass exodus to foreign countries goes back to the time when the Slovene population entered the first phase of demographic transition. Despite the natural increase in the population, the actual increase was half smaller because of emigration. In general it is possible to differentiate between emigration which took place before World War I, emigration between the two world wars, emigration after World War II until the end of the fifties and emigration since the beginning of the sixties. More than a century of mass emigration is closely connected to the territorial contraction of the Slovene ethnic space, to the abandonment of farming and the departure of the agrarian population from the Slovene littoral, Dinaric karst and Subpannonian areas.