Finland

Who needs a visa for Finland is decided by Regulation (EU) 2018/1806: Annex I nationals need one, Annex II nationals do not for 90 days in any 180-day period. Finland is bound by it as an ordinary member state - there is no Finnish protocol, and the word Finland does not appear anywhere in the Regulation, preamble included. The Aliens Act does not reproduce the ninety days as a right. Section 11(2) says the entry conditions for a stay of no more than 90 days in any 180-day period are laid down in the Schengen Borders Code, and the only place the figure appears in Finnish law is the definition of a short-stay visa in section 3(4b). What section 18(2) does say is that the states whose nationals need a visa, and those whose nationals do not, are laid down by a Council regulation - and Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 is a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council. That sentence has carried no amendment marker since the Act was enacted in 2004, when the instrument it described was Council Regulation (EC) No 539/2001.

Finland has no means-tested residence permit. Section 47(1) sets out the whole of what a continuous permit may be granted for to a person who is abroad: having been a Finnish citizen or having a Finnish-born parent or grandparent, continuous employment, or continuous business. Section 45(1) does the same for a temporary permit: temporary work, temporary business, or "another special reason". Income appears in the Act in a different role entirely. Section 39 makes secure livelihood a condition of almost every permit, and section 39(2) names pensions, assets and other sources alongside employment as things that can satisfy it - but satisfying the money test is not a ground for a permit, it is what you must also do once you have one. Nothing in the Act turns a private income into a right to live here, and "another special reason" in section 45(1)(3) is a temporary permit decided case by case with no stated content.

The Aliens Act has no residence permit for a retired person and no category a pension on its own opens. The word for pension occurs three times in the whole Act and never as a ground of admission: in section 39(2) as one of the sources that can make a livelihood secure, in section 56 a as an age threshold that lifts the language and work-history conditions for permanent residence, and in section 163 as part of the Union free-movement right that a worker who reaches pension age keeps. What a person over 65 actually gains in Finnish immigration law is that second one: permanent residence after six years without having to show Finnish or Swedish, and - under the Nationality Act as amended in 2025 - naturalisation without having to satisfy the new income test.

Every work-based permit must clear section 71(1)(3): the pay must be at least the euro amount laid down in chapter 5, section 4(2) of the Unemployment Security Act, which is 1,134 euros a month. That is a cross-reference into a statute about something else entirely - how much a month of work has to pay before it counts towards unemployment benefit - and the figure it lands on is the only one in that subsection. On top of it, the ordinary employee permit under section 72 carries a second floor set by government decree, which Decree 860/2024 fixes at 1,600 euros a month gross. The specialist permit under section 73 escapes both: it asks instead for at least the average gross wage of a wage earner, a figure the Act does not state and does not say who publishes. Labour market testing applies only to the section 72 permit, and falls away on a renewal in the same occupation or after nine months' work. Every application in the chapter carries a two-month decision deadline written into section 84.

Finland has no investor permit and names no sum of money. The two business routes are the entrepreneur permit and the growth entrepreneur permit, and both turn on somebody's opinion of the business rather than on capital. For the entrepreneur permit, section 79 makes the permit conditional on a favourable partial decision by the elinvoimakeskus, the regional agency, and section 79 a tells that agency what to check: that the company is registered in Finland, that it is assessed to have the conditions for profitable business, that it has sufficient resources, and that it has not substantially neglected taxes or charges. The same agency must also satisfy itself that the applicant's livelihood is secured by income from the business, with a start-up allowance for the early stage: employment income, the company's start-up financing or the applicant's own funds. The growth entrepreneur permit runs on a statement from Business Finland that the business model and the team would meet its own criteria for funding early-stage innovative high-growth companies. Nothing anywhere states a figure.

Finland's student permit is not in the Aliens Act. It is in a separate statute, the Act on the conditions of entry and residence of third-country nationals on the basis of research, studies, traineeship and voluntary service (719/2018), and three things in it are unusual. The permit is a shall, not a may: admission to a degree programme at a Finnish higher education institution plus payment of the fees the institution requires produces a permit. It is granted as a continuous permit for the time it takes to complete the studies rather than renewed annually, and an extension covers the remaining right to study. And the work right is written as an annual average - the amount of work must even out to thirty hours a week over the calendar year - which lets a student work full-time in the summer without breaching it. Money is shown for the first year only, and sickness insurance is required, reduced to cover for medicines alone where the studies are expected to last two years or more. After the degree, a permit for job-seeking or business runs up to two years and may be applied for as late as five years after the study permit expired.

This is where Finland parts company with both its neighbours. Section 47(1)(1) of the Aliens Act makes it a ground for a continuous residence permit that the applicant has been a Finnish citizen, or that at least one parent or one grandparent is or has been a Finnish citizen by birth. It is the first item on the list, ahead of work and business. Section 47(4) then disapplies the livelihood test to it: neither the applicant's income nor a family member's has to be shown. Section 53(4) grants the permit for four years rather than the ordinary one. Sweden's record finds no residence route for a grandchild or an adult child at all; Denmark's finds that descent gives citizenship at birth or nothing, with the one ancestry door open to people who were Danish and lost it. Finland has that door too - section 29 of the Nationality Act restores citizenship to a former Finnish citizen by declaration - and a second one beside it that reaches two generations back and asks for no money. There is also a third, narrower route in section 48, for people from the territory of the former Soviet Union who belonged to the Ingrian population transferred to Finland in 1943 and 1944 and returned after the war, or who served in the Finnish army between 1939 and 1945.

Finland acquired a minimum age for spousal reunification in 2025 and wrote an exemption into the same sentence. Section 38 a requires both spouses to have turned 21 when the permit takes effect, and says the requirement does not apply where the permit is granted to the spouse of a Finnish citizen. Section 50(1) grants a continuous permit to the family member of a Finnish citizen resident in Finland, applied for in Finland or abroad, and section 50(4) says that permit does not require secure livelihood. So for a Finnish sponsor there is no age floor and no money test; for every other sponsor there is a floor of 21 and the ordinary section 39 livelihood requirement. The definition of family member is wide: a spouse, an unmarried child under 18, and - by section 37(2) - a cohabiting partner of either sex after two years living together, with the two years waived where there is a child in joint custody or another weighty reason.

Chapter 10 of the Aliens Act transposes the Union's free movement directive, and section 3(2) draws the group it applies to: nationals of EU member states and of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, all treated alike. A Union citizen stays three months on an identity card or passport with no other condition, must register with the Immigration Service if the stay runs past three months, and acquires a right of permanent residence after five years of lawful continuous residence that no condition attaches to. The Nordic right sits beside it in section 157 and is older and differently shaped: a citizen of Iceland, Norway, Sweden or Denmark may enter without a passport when coming directly from one of those states and stay without registering the right of residence - but must be able to establish identity and citizenship reliably, and must register the residence under the Nordic population-registration agreement for anything other than a short stay. Section 158 a(3) adds a benefit the Union rule does not give: a family member of a Nordic citizen has a right of residence even where livelihood is not secure.

Finnish naturalisation has been rewritten three times in two years and the Finlex consolidation shows all three at once. Act 474/2024 raised the residence requirement from five years to eight with effect from 1 October 2024. Act 929/2025 added a livelihood condition in force from 17 December 2025: the applicant must give a credible account of what they live on and must not have drawn unemployment benefit or social assistance for more than three months in total over the last two years, with the condition disapplied below 18 and from 65. Act 552/2026 adds a civic-knowledge condition and a whole new chapter 3 a creating a citizenship exam, in force from 1 January 2027 - and the consolidated text prints both the current wording of section 13 and the wording that replaces it, each marked with the date it takes effect. Two shortcuts survive all of this. A citizen of Iceland, Norway, Sweden or Denmark may be naturalised after two years, and a person who meets the language requirement and has close ties to Finland after five.

Section 11(1) of the Income Tax Act gives two tests joined by "or": a person is resident in Finland if they have their actual dwelling and home here, or if they stay here continuously for more than six months, and a temporary absence does not break the continuity. Residence means tax on worldwide income under section 9(1)(1); a non-resident is taxed on Finnish-source income only. The same subsection adds a trailing rule for Finnish citizens who leave: they remain resident until three years have passed from the end of the year of departure unless they show they had no essential ties to Finland in the tax year. Beside the ordinary regime sits the key-employee withholding tax, and it moved this January. Act 1144/2025 cut the flat rate from 32 per cent to 25 per cent from 1 January 2026, deleted the condition that the employee must not be a Finnish citizen, and capped the regime at 60 months for a Finnish citizen against 84 for everyone else. The salary floor is 5,800 euros a month, and teachers and researchers are exempt from the salary and expertise conditions altogether.

Finnish public health care is owed by a hyvinvointialue, a wellbeing services county, to its residents, and whether you are one is not a health question at all. Section 8(1) of the Act on organising health and social services makes the county responsible for arranging care for its residents and says the right of anyone else is provided for separately. Section 3(1) of the Act on wellbeing services counties defines a resident as a person whose kotikunta - municipality of residence under the Municipality of Residence Act - is in the county's area. Section 4 of that Act then says who can have a kotikunta at all: a Finnish citizen, a holder of a continuous or permanent residence permit, a registered Union, EEA or Swiss citizen, a family member of someone who has one, or a holder of a temporary permit of at least a year who also intends to settle here permanently. For that last group section 4(2) lists what counts as evidence of settling, and the clearest item is a contract for work or study in Finland lasting at least two years. So a one-year permit is not enough on its own and a two-year job contract usually is. The Health Care Act, which says what the care consists of, does not apply in Åland at all.

Chapter 15, section 6 of the Credit Institutions Act gives anyone lawfully resident in an EEA state the right to a euro-denominated basic payment account from a deposit bank that offers payment services, and it does something the Union's directive does not: it puts electronic identification services inside the same right, in the same sentence, three times over. Section 6 a(2) makes that explicit - the bank must offer a strong electronic identification service to its basic-account customer if it offers one to anyone else - which in Finland means the bank identifiers that are the ordinary key to tax filings, health records and public services. The bank must accept or reject the application without undue delay and at the latest within ten banking days, and may refuse only for a reason arising from the Money Laundering Act (444/2017) or the sanctions Act (659/1967). A refusal must be given precisely, in writing, free of charge, with the appeal route explained. Fees must be reasonable and correspond to the bank's actual costs, and reasonableness is assessed against the national income level.

The Driving Licences Act sorts foreign licences into three boxes and gives each a different clock. An EU or EEA licence entitles you to drive here for as long as it is valid, with no Finnish deadline at all, and may be exchanged under the ordinary licence rules. A licence from a state party to the Geneva 1949 or Vienna 1968 road traffic conventions is accepted for two years from the holder's entry in the population register, and inside those two years it may be exchanged for a Finnish category B or motorcycle licence without a new driving test. Any other licence from a state Finland recognises, in categories A1, A2, A or B, is accepted for one year from entry into the country or from registration, and section 61 provides no exchange without a test except for diplomatic staff. Two further conditions catch people out. A convention licence issued while the holder was already normally resident in Finland is not merely useless for driving - section 60(4) says it is not valid in Finland at all. And sections 60 and 61 both exclude Åland by name, so what a foreign licence is worth there is a question for Åland's own law.

Finland does not decide this. Personal property imported by someone transferring their normal residence from a third country into the customs territory enters free of import duties on conditions set by a directly applicable Union regulation: six months' possession and, for non-consumable goods, use at the former residence; a continuous twelve months of normal residence outside the customs territory; and entry for free circulation within twelve months of the move, in as many consignments as you like inside that period. Alcohol, tobacco, commercial means of transport and trade equipment other than portable instruments of the applied or liberal arts get no relief at all.