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---
title: How to implement internationalization in Next.js
nav_title: Internationalization
description: Next.js has built-in support for internationalized routing and language detection. Learn more here.
---

<details>
  <summary>Examples</summary>

- [i18n routing](https://github.com/vercel/next.js/tree/canary/examples/i18n-routing-pages)

</details>

Next.js has built-in support for internationalized ([i18n](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization#Naming)) routing since `v10.0.0`. You can provide a list of locales, the default locale, and domain-specific locales and Next.js will automatically handle the routing.

The i18n routing support is currently meant to complement existing i18n library solutions like [`react-intl`](https://formatjs.io/docs/getting-started/installation), [`react-i18next`](https://react.i18next.com/), [`lingui`](https://lingui.dev/), [`rosetta`](https://github.com/lukeed/rosetta), [`next-intl`](https://github.com/amannn/next-intl), [`next-translate`](https://github.com/aralroca/next-translate), [`next-multilingual`](https://github.com/Avansai/next-multilingual), [`tolgee`](https://tolgee.io/integrations/next), [`paraglide-next`](https://inlang.com/m/osslbuzt/paraglide-next-i18n), [`next-intlayer`](https://intlayer.org/doc/environment/nextjs) and others by streamlining the routes and locale parsing.

## Getting started

To get started, add the `i18n` config to your `next.config.js` file.

Locales are [UTS Locale Identifiers](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35-59/tr35.html#Identifiers), a standardized format for defining locales.

Generally a Locale Identifier is made up of a language, region, and script separated by a dash: `language-region-script`. The region and script are optional. An example:

- `en-US` - English as spoken in the United States
- `nl-NL` - Dutch as spoken in the Netherlands
- `nl` - Dutch, no specific region

If user locale is `nl-BE` and it is not listed in your configuration, they will be redirected to `nl` if available, or to the default locale otherwise.
If you don't plan to support all regions of a country, it is therefore a good practice to include country locales that will act as fallbacks.

```js filename="next.config.js"
module.exports = {
  i18n: {
    // These are all the locales you want to support in
    // your application
    locales: ['en-US', 'fr', 'nl-NL'],
    // This is the default locale you want to be used when visiting
    // a non-locale prefixed path e.g. `/hello`
    defaultLocale: 'en-US',
    // This is a list of locale domains and the default locale they
    // should handle (these are only required when setting up domain routing)
    // Note: subdomains must be included in the domain value to be matched e.g. "fr.example.com".
    domains: [
      {
        domain: 'example.com',
        defaultLocale: 'en-US',
      },
      {
        domain: 'example.nl',
        defaultLocale: 'nl-NL',
      },
      {
        domain: 'example.fr',
        defaultLocale: 'fr',
        // an optional http field can also be used to test
        // locale domains locally with http instead of https
        http: true,
      },
    ],
  },
}
```

## Locale Strategies

There are two locale handling strategies: Sub-path Routing and Domain Routing.

### Sub-path Routing

Sub-path Routing puts the locale in the url path.

```js filename="next.config.js"
module.exports = {
  i18n: {
    locales: ['en-US', 'fr', 'nl-NL'],
    defaultLocale: 'en-US',
  },
}
```

With the above configuration `en-US`, `fr`, and `nl-NL` will be available to be routed to, and `en-US` is the default locale. If you have a `pages/blog.js` the following urls would be available:

- `/blog`
- `/fr/blog`
- `/nl-nl/blog`

The default locale does not have a prefix.

### Domain Routing

By using domain routing you can configure locales to be served from different domains:

```js filename="next.config.js"
module.exports = {
  i18n: {
    locales: ['en-US', 'fr', 'nl-NL', 'nl-BE'],
    defaultLocale: 'en-US',

    domains: [
      {
        // Note: subdomains must be included in the domain value to be matched
        // e.g. www.example.com should be used if that is the expected hostname
        domain: 'example.com',
        defaultLocale: 'en-US',
      },
      {
        domain: 'example.fr',
        defaultLocale: 'fr',
      },
      {
        domain: 'example.nl',
        defaultLocale: 'nl-NL',
        // specify other locales that should be redirected
        // to this domain
        locales: ['nl-BE'],
      },
    ],
  },
}
```

For example if you have `pages/blog.js` the following urls will be available:

- `example.com/blog`
- `www.example.com/blog`
- `example.fr/blog`
- `example.nl/blog`
- `example.nl/nl-BE/blog`

## Automatic Locale Detection

When a user visits the application root (generally `/`), Next.js will try to automatically detect which locale the user prefers based on the [`Accept-Language`](https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Accept-Language) header and the current domain.

If a locale other than the default locale is detected, the user will be redirected to either:

- **When using Sub-path Routing:** The locale prefixed path
- **When using Domain Routing:** The domain with that locale specified as the default

When using Domain Routing, if a user with the `Accept-Language` header `fr;q=0.9` visits `example.com`, they will be redirected to `example.fr` since that domain handles the `fr` locale by default.

When using Sub-path Routing, the user would be redirected to `/fr`.

### Prefixing the Default Locale

With Next.js 12 and [Middleware](/docs/pages/api-reference/file-conventions/middleware), we can add a prefix to the default locale with a [workaround](https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions/18419).

For example, here's a `next.config.js` file with support for a few languages. Note the `"default"` locale has been added intentionally.

```js filename="next.config.js"
module.exports = {
  i18n: {
    locales: ['default', 'en', 'de', 'fr'],
    defaultLocale: 'default',
    localeDetection: false,
  },
  trailingSlash: true,
}
```

Next, we can use [Middleware](/docs/pages/api-reference/file-conventions/middleware) to add custom routing rules:

```ts filename="middleware.ts"
import { NextRequest, NextResponse } from 'next/server'

const PUBLIC_FILE = /\.(.*)$/

export async function middleware(req: NextRequest) {
  if (
    req.nextUrl.pathname.startsWith('/_next') ||
    req.nextUrl.pathname.includes('/api/') ||
    PUBLIC_FILE.test(req.nextUrl.pathname)
  ) {
    return
  }

  if (req.nextUrl.locale === 'default') {
    const locale = req.cookies.get('NEXT_LOCALE')?.value || 'en'

    return NextResponse.redirect(
      new URL(`/${locale}${req.nextUrl.pathname}${req.nextUrl.search}`, req.url)
    )
  }
}
```

This [Middleware](/docs/pages/api-reference/file-conventions/middleware) skips adding the default prefix to [API Routes](/docs/pages/building-your-application/routing/api-routes) and [public](/docs/pages/api-reference/file-conventions/public-folder) files like fonts or images. If a request is made to the default locale, we redirect to our prefix `/en`.

### Disabling Automatic Locale Detection

The automatic locale detection can be disabled with:

```js filename="next.config.js"
module.exports = {
  i18n: {
    localeDetection: false,
  },
}
```

When `localeDetection` is set to `false` Next.js will no longer automatically redirect based on the user's preferred locale and will only provide locale information detected from either the locale based domain or locale path as described above.

## Accessing the locale information

You can access the locale information via the Next.js router. For example, using the [`useRouter()`](/docs/pages/api-reference/functions/use-router) hook the following properties are available:

- `locale` contains the currently active locale.
- `locales` contains all configured locales.
- `defaultLocale` contains the configured default locale.

When [pre-rendering](/docs/pages/building-your-application/rendering/static-site-generation) pages with `getStaticProps` or `getServerSideProps`, the locale information is provided in [the context](/docs/pages/building-your-application/data-fetching/get-static-props) provided to the function.

When leveraging `getStaticPaths`, the configured locales are provided in the context parameter of the function under `locales` and the configured defaultLocale under `defaultLocale`.

## Transition between locales

You can use `next/link` or `next/router` to transition between locales.

For `next/link`, a `locale` prop can be provided to transition to a different locale from the currently active one. If no `locale` prop is provided, the currently active `locale` is used during client-transitions. For example:

```jsx
import Link from 'next/link'

export default function IndexPage(props) {
  return (
    <Link href="/another" locale="fr">
      To /fr/another
    </Link>
  )
}
```

When using the `next/router` methods directly, you can specify the `locale` that should be used via the transition options. For example:

```jsx
import { useRouter } from 'next/router'

export default function IndexPage(props) {
  const router = useRouter()

  return (
    <div
      onClick={() => {
        router.push('/another', '/another', { locale: 'fr' })
      }}
    >
      to /fr/another
    </div>
  )
}
```

Note that to handle switching only the `locale` while preserving all routing information such as [dynamic route](/docs/pages/building-your-application/routing/dynamic-routes) query values or hidden href query values, you can provide the `href` parameter as an object:

```jsx
import { useRouter } from 'next/router'
const router = useRouter()
const { pathname, asPath, query } = router
// change just the locale and maintain all other route information including href's query
router.push({ pathname, query }, asPath, { locale: nextLocale })
```

See [here](/docs/pages/api-reference/functions/use-router#with-url-object) for more information on the object structure for `router.push`.

If you have a `href` that already includes the locale you can opt-out of automatically handling the locale prefixing:

```jsx
import Link from 'next/link'

export default function IndexPage(props) {
  return (
    <Link href="/fr/another" locale={false}>
      To /fr/another
    </Link>
  )
}
```

## Leveraging the `NEXT_LOCALE` cookie

Next.js allows setting a `NEXT_LOCALE=the-locale` cookie, which takes priority over the accept-language header. This cookie can be set using a language switcher and then when a user comes back to the site it will leverage the locale specified in the cookie when redirecting from `/` to the correct locale location.

For example, if a user prefers the locale `fr` in their accept-language header but a `NEXT_LOCALE=en` cookie is set the `en` locale when visiting `/` the user will be redirected to the `en` locale location until the cookie is removed or expired.

## Search Engine Optimization

Since Next.js knows what language the user is visiting it will automatically add the `lang` attribute to the `<html>` tag.

Next.js doesn't know about variants of a page so it's up to you to add the `hreflang` meta tags using [`next/head`](/docs/pages/api-reference/components/head). You can learn more about `hreflang` in the [Google Webmasters documentation](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077).

## How does this work with Static Generation?

> Note that Internationalized Routing does not integrate with [`output: 'export'`](/docs/pages/guides/static-exports) as it does not leverage the Next.js routing layer. Hybrid Next.js applications that do not use `output: 'export'` are fully supported.

### Dynamic Routes and `getStaticProps` Pages

For pages using `getStaticProps` with [Dynamic Routes](/docs/pages/building-your-application/routing/dynamic-routes), all locale variants of the page desired to be prerendered need to be returned from [`getStaticPaths`](/docs/pages/building-your-application/data-fetching/get-static-paths). Along with the `params` object returned for `paths`, you can also return a `locale` field specifying which locale you want to render. For example:

```jsx filename="pages/blog/[slug].js"
export const getStaticPaths = ({ locales }) => {
  return {
    paths: [
      // if no `locale` is provided only the defaultLocale will be generated
      { params: { slug: 'post-1' }, locale: 'en-US' },
      { params: { slug: 'post-1' }, locale: 'fr' },
    ],
    fallback: true,
  }
}
```

For [Automatically Statically Optimized](/docs/pages/building-your-application/rendering/automatic-static-optimization) and non-dynamic `getStaticProps` pages, **a version of the page will be generated for each locale**. This is important to consider because it can increase build times depending on how many locales are configured inside `getStaticProps`.

For example, if you have 50 locales configured with 10 non-dynamic pages using `getStaticProps`, this means `getStaticProps` will be called 500 times. 50 versions of the 10 pages will be generated during each build.

To decrease the build time of dynamic pages with `getStaticProps`, use a [`fallback` mode](/docs/pages/api-reference/functions/get-static-paths#fallback-true). This allows you to return only the most popular paths and locales from `getStaticPaths` for prerendering during the build. Then, Next.js will build the remaining pages at runtime as they are requested.

### Automatically Statically Optimized Pages

For pages that are [automatically statically optimized](/docs/pages/building-your-application/rendering/automatic-static-optimization), a version of the page will be generated for each locale.

### Non-dynamic getStaticProps Pages

For non-dynamic `getStaticProps` pages, a version is generated for each locale like above. `getStaticProps` is called with each `locale` that is being rendered. If you would like to opt-out of a certain locale from being pre-rendered, you can return `notFound: true` from `getStaticProps` and this variant of the page will not be generated.

```js
export async function getStaticProps({ locale }) {
  // Call an external API endpoint to get posts.
  // You can use any data fetching library
  const res = await fetch(`https://.../posts?locale=${locale}`)
  const posts = await res.json()

  if (posts.length === 0) {
    return {
      notFound: true,
    }
  }

  // By returning { props: posts }, the Blog component
  // will receive `posts` as a prop at build time
  return {
    props: {
      posts,
    },
  }
}
```

## Limits for the i18n config

- `locales`: 100 total locales
- `domains`: 100 total locale domain items

> **Good to know**: These limits have been added initially to prevent potential [performance issues at build time](#dynamic-routes-and-getstaticprops-pages). You can workaround these limits with custom routing using [Middleware](/docs/pages/api-reference/file-conventions/middleware) in Next.js 12.