Schänis has a population (as of ) of . , about 9.5% of the population was made up of foreign nationals. Of the foreign population, (), 42 are from Germany, 64 are from Italy, 230 are from ex-Yugoslavia, 10 are from Austria, 5 are from Turkey, and 63 are from another country. Over the last 10 years the population has grown at a rate of 3.7%. Most of the population () speaks German (93.0%), with Albanian being second most common ( 2.2%) and Serbo-Croatian being third ( 1.7%). Of the Swiss national languages (), 3,323 speak German, 9 people speak French, 31 people speak Italian, and 8 people speak Romansh.