Sweden’s Migration Agency, Migrationsverket, has granted Swedish citizenship to 98 people in July, the first full month under the country’s stricter eligibility rules, which entered into force on June 6.
Official agency figures show that 2,369 new applications were received in July, 2,825 cases were decided and 98 citizenships were granted. The agency has not disclosed how many of those decisions ended in rejection.
The figure compares with 1,602 citizenships granted in June and 18,332 over the first seven months of 2026 as a whole.
The agency has urged caution in reading the numbers. The first citizenship test was held on August 15 and, while it waits for the results, it says it is deciding mainly cases that end in refusal.
The majority of the 98 people granted citizenship in July were nationals of Finland, Norway or Denmark.
Since June 6 only adult Nordic citizens, stateless children and young adults born in Sweden may still acquire citizenship through the simplified notification route. Everyone else has to apply and to sit the new tests.
Few Syrian nationals received Swedish citizenship, a contrast with earlier periods when Syrians formed one of the largest groups among successful applicants. In 2021 a little over one in three of all new Swedish citizens were Syrian, and between 2015 and 2021 a total of 100,761 Syrian nationals were granted citizenship, according to Statistics Sweden.
The new rules, adopted by the right-wing majority in the Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament, raise the general residency requirement from five to eight years, introduce a self-sufficiency condition, tighten conduct requirements and require knowledge of the Swedish language and society.
The income test is set at three income base amounts a year, about 20,000 Swedish kronor (€1,800) a month before tax, with no more than six months on income support over the previous three years.
Nordic citizens face lighter conditions, including a two-year residency period and exemptions from certain language and knowledge tests.
The rules took effect without transitional provisions, so every case still open on June 6 is judged under them, including applications lodged years earlier.
The agency has noted that the new rules are affecting processing, with many cases requiring additional documentation linked to the citizenship tests.
Some 103,598 citizenship cases were open at the end of July. In about 13,000 of them a court has ordered the agency to rule without further delay, broadcaster SVT reported on May 25.
The agency told Bulletin it issued 4,169 citizenship decisions in May, up by more than 61 per cent on January’s 2,584. Press chief Jesper Tengroth confirmed that staff worked overtime at weekends through the spring. The magazine Fokus has asked why the pace rose in the weeks before a law that tightened the conditions.
Before the Swedish Government took office in October 2022, the number of people granted Swedish citizenship had been rising steadily, reaching 63,818 in 2018, 64,206 in 2019, 80,175 in 2020, 89,354 in 2021 and a peak of 92,225 in 2022, on Statistics Sweden’s count.
Under the present government the figures began to decline, falling to 67,789 in 2023, approximately 65,600 in 2024 and around 38,800 in 2025 on the Migration Agency’s own series. It attributes that drop to tighter checks on identity documents and to a requirement that applicants appear in person.
If the July figure of 98 granted citizenships were sustained across a full year, that would equate to roughly 1,176 citizenships for the entire year. It would be about 1.3 per cent of the 2022 peak of 92,225, around 3 per cent of the 2025 total of approximately 38,800 and well below the levels seen throughout the previous decade.
🇸🇪 Sweden to apply stricter citizenship rules for applicants.‼️
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