How many people were granted Swedish citizenship in May?
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A total of nine citizenship applications through naturalisation were approved in the month of May, according to figures from the Migration Agency. In April, as The Local was the only Swedish news site to report, six such applications were granted.
To put it into perspective: between January and March, Sweden approved more than 4,200 naturalisation cases every month, on average.
'Naturalisation cases' are the standard kinds of applications by an adult foreigner who wishes to become a Swedish citizen and they make up by far the majority of cases.
A total of 962 citizenship through notification cases (an easier route available mainly to children and Nordic citizens) were approved in May, as well as 68 applications for retaining one's citizenship (for example Swedes born abroad) and 36 so-called citizenship declarations (for people who don't know whether they are citizens).
The figures include applications granted by the Migration Agency itself and those granted in court. Courts were able to process appeals as normal in April and May.
Statistics for the month of June will be publicly available from mid-July.
As The Local reported at the time, the Migration Agency was unable to approve citizenship through naturalisation cases for almost two months in spring, because it hadn't yet fully set up its routines for the in-person identification required of applicants after the government ordered the agency to step up security checks as of April 1st.
All nationalities were affected by the freeze, despite Migration Minister Johan Forssell's pledge to The Local's readers in January that work permit holders and people from countries without security risks would be unaffected by extra security delays.
Here's a table which shows how many citizenship cases have been granted in 2025, per nationality:
In the second half of May, the Migration Agency said it had begun contacting citizenship applicants to book in-person identify checks, effectively ending the freeze.
Applicants who are at the final stages of their application will receive a letter inviting them to book a time for a 'personal appearance' at any of eight Migration Agency offices: Malmö, Växjö, Gothenburg, Norrköping, Örebro, Sundbyberg, Sundsvall or Boden. Those who haven't been invited to such a visit should not book a time.
It was initially reported that certain nationalities with biometric passports would be exempt and would instead be able to confirm their identity digitally via the Freja app, but as The Local has previously reported, the technological solution for that isn't yet in place, so for the time being, all applicants have to turn up for a personal meeting, regardless of their nationality.
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The extra stage in the process, which also includes applicants being sent an 11-page questionnaire with additional security questions, is the result of an order from the government and its far-right Sweden Democrat allies in January for the Migration Agency to take "forceful measures" to "as far as possible" prevent people who pose a threat to security or use a fake identity from being granted citizenship.
Experts had previously guessed that security checks would be tightened as a pretext of slowing down the awarding of new citizenships until stricter rules are in place in 2026 – a slowdown strongly hinted at by the government in an opinion piece in the DN newspaper in November.
Forssell later denied that the underlying intention was to slow down citizenship applications, telling the TT news agency that the point was only "to prevent people who pose a threat to security from being granted Swedish citizenship".
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However, the extra checks are still expected to cause delays.
In October 2024, the agency predicted that it would conclude 87,000 applications each year in 2025 and 2026, thanks to increased staff at the agency – a first step towards reducing the heavily criticised long waiting times for Swedish citizenship.
But the new security checks forced the agency in April to lower its previous estimate by more than a quarter: to 64,000 concluded citizenship cases in 2025 and 65,000 in 2026.
According to the Migration Agency, 75 percent of recently concluded cases involving adults received a decision within 24 months.
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