As the global leader in family history and consumer genomics, Ancestry® is continuously developing new ways for you to learn about yourself through DNA and empowering you to unlock more discoveries about your family history. One way Ancestry applies advanced technology and evolving DNA science is by updating communities, which can connect people through their DNA to the places their ancestors likely lived and the paths they might have followed to get there over the past 75-300 years. Today, we are proud to unveil another significant update to AncestryDNA® communities for members with ties to Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, and the Transdanubia Region. 

What are communities?

A community is a group of AncestryDNA members who likely descend from a population of common ancestors, people who lived in the same place around the same time or traveled from the same place around the same time. 

Our Genetic Communities™ technology detects groups of AncestryDNA members who are most likely connected because they share recent ancestors who came from the same place (such as Ulster Irish) or culture (such as Afro-Caribbean Peoples of Belize, Honduras, and Nicaragua). Using our Genetic CommunitiesTM technology, we analyze genetic connections between groups of AncestryDNA members. We then use public family trees, ethnicity data, and historical records to determine where this group of people lived over time.

While your ethnicity region reflects people who you possibly share ancestry with from hundreds to thousands of years ago, a community represents one portion of your past, a connection to a more recent place and time. A few communities might have members who are from a single ethnicity region, most are made up of thousands of people with many different ethnicity regions in their results.

The strength behind our communities is our unparalleled DNA network of over 20 million people and the largest network of family trees, with over 100 million. You can discover your origins from over 1,500 regions worldwide. 

Updated Communities in Eastern Europe

As our DNA network grows and science advances, we can deliver even more value to our members, including more granular insights about their heritage and compelling new paths to learn about ourselves using genetics. With updated communities, we can better pinpoint where in the world your ancestors were most likely from--and this means there may be some changes to your results.

Extending communities to more diverse regions is important to Ancestry. Our updated communities now include 10 in Czechia, 61 in Poland, 15 in Slovakia & Hungary, 8 in Ukraine, 1 in Latvia & Estonia, 4 in Lithuania, 4 in Russia and 1 in the Transdanubia region.

Whether it’s discovering an even more detailed Polish heritage or uncovering your roots across the many communities available across eastern Europe, your next big discovery could be waiting in our latest communities update.

With the largest consumer DNA network, AncestryDNA continues to add communities around the world

Revisiting Your Results

We encourage you to look at your DNA Story again to see if you have a new community waiting to be explored and to share with your family and loved ones. 

As new people continue to join our AncestryDNA network and science and technology continue to evolve, we will continue to provide updates for our members. It’s just one of the many ways Ancestry helps you learn more about your family, your past, and yourself.