Mels has a population (as of ) of . , about 14.4% of the population was made up of foreign nationals. Of the foreign population, (), 30 are from Germany, 228 are from Italy, 563 are from ex-Yugoslavia, 21 are from Austria, 90 are from Turkey, and 144 are from another country. Over the last 10 years the population has grown at a rate of 7.4%. Most of the population () speaks German (90.8%), with Albanian being second most common ( 2.5%) and Italian being third ( 2.2%). Of the Swiss national languages (), 7,114 speak German, 10 people speak French, 169 people speak Italian, and 32 people speak Romansh.