On June 6th, strict new citizenship rules came into force in Sweden. The changed law includes longer residency requirements, passing tests in Swedish civics and the Swedish language, and expanded income requirements – among other elements.
Because the law was passed without transitional rules for the hundred thousand people in the case backlog, anyone with an application remaining in the queue after June 6th 2026 risked rejection on the basis of rules that didn't exist when they applied.
New statistics from the Migration Agency now show that 99 people were granted citizenship in July, down from 1,646 in June and 3,970 in May.*
Out of those, only 20 were so-called naturalisation cases. These are the standard kinds of citizenship cases which make up by far the majority and are in short the ones you think of when you think of citizenship applications.
A total of 64 citizenship through notification cases (an easier route which as of this summer is only available to stateless people born in Sweden, Nordic citizens, and children born abroad to a Swedish father who was not married to the child's mother when the child was born) were approved in July, as well as nine applications for retaining one’s citizenship (for example Swedes born abroad) and six so-called citizenship declarations (for people who don’t know whether or not they are citizens).
The Migration Agency warned that the statistics should be interpreted with caution, as it isn't at the moment making any decisions on applications awaiting a result on the citizenship tests.
Most of the citizenship applications were awarded to Nordic citizens in July, including 26 to Finnish citizens, 19 to Danish citizens and 19 to Norwegian citizens.
Five people from Syria were awarded citizenship, as well as three people from Eritrea and the United Kingdom, two people from Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Iraq, and one each from Australia, Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, Nigeria, Somalia and Sri Lanka.
Ten new citizenship were granted to people whose existing citizenship was listed as "unknown" in the Migration Agency's statistics, and two to stateless applicants.
No Swedish citizenships were awarded to any other nationalities in July.
*The Migration Agency's spreadsheet shows that 99 citizenship applications were granted in July, whereas the website states 98
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