Sweden

Sweden has nothing of the kind Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland have. Citizenship by descent happens at birth and only then: section 2 of the citizenship Act gives Swedish citizenship to a child one of whose parents is a Swedish citizen, or whose deceased parent was one at death. There is no claim for a grandchild and no application a descendant can make later. Chapter 5 of the Aliens Act, which lists every family ground for a residence permit, reaches a spouse, a cohabiting partner and a child, and reaches a parent only where the sponsor in Sweden is a child. An adult child of a Swedish citizen is not on that list. The nearest thing is section 3 g, which admits a close relative who shared a household with the sponsor and depends on them, where that dependency already existed in the country of origin - a test about a present household, not about a bloodline. The Act also closes the descent line in the other direction: a Swedish citizen born abroad who has never been resident in Sweden loses that citizenship at twenty-two unless they apply to keep it.

Family reunification in Sweden was renumbered through chapter 5 of the Aliens Act in 2026 and the shape it has now is worth reading carefully. Where the sponsor is a Swedish or Nordic citizen or holds a permanent right of residence, section 3 says a permit may be given to a spouse, a cohabiting partner or a child. Where the sponsor instead holds a permanent residence permit or a time-limited one of at least a year with well-founded prospects, section 3 a says a permit shall be given to the same people. Both are now subject to section 3 j, the maintenance and housing requirement: the sponsor must be able to support themselves and the applicant and have a home of sufficient size and standard for both. The Aliens Ordinance turns that into an arithmetic - pay after tax of 1.30 times the enforcement normal amount, plus the housing cost - and exempts the spouse of a Swedish, EEA or Swiss citizen where the couple have lived together abroad for a long time or the relationship is otherwise clearly well established. A permit may be refused where either partner is under twenty-one. A permit granted on a tie to a Swedish citizen runs two years, and permanent residence needs three years of time-limited permits.

Sweden belongs to two arrangements that let people live here without a permit, and the Aliens Act writes both into its own text. The first is the European Economic Area: chapter 3 a defines a right of residence as the right of an EEA national and their family members to stay in Sweden for more than three months without a residence permit, and chapter 2, section 8 b lifts the permit requirement for anyone holding it. The right is conditional while it lasts - employment, self-employment, genuine job-seeking, enrolled study with means and comprehensive sickness insurance, or sufficient means with that insurance - and becomes unconditional after five years of lawful uninterrupted residence. The second is the Nordic arrangement, which the Act handles by naming four countries: a citizen of Denmark, Finland, Iceland or Norway needs no residence permit and no work permit. Of the forty-two origins this site covers, the first reaches seven and the second reaches none.

Sweden's naturalisation rule changed on 6 June 2026 and the figure most sources still give is the old one. Section 11 of the citizenship Act now requires eight years of residence here, not five, alongside a proven identity, a permanent residence permit, a good and honest way of life, an ability to support yourself as defined in section 11 b, and sufficient knowledge of Swedish and of Swedish society. Section 11 a sets shorter periods for particular applicants: two years for a Danish, Finnish, Icelandic or Norwegian citizen and for a former Swedish citizen, five for a stateless person, seven for a recognised refugee, for the spouse or cohabiting partner of a Swedish citizen and for an applicant under twenty-one. The spousal seven years has its own condition - five years of the relationship and five years of the partner's Swedish citizenship. The self-support test is an income of at least three income base amounts a year with no more than six months of social assistance in the three years before the application. Nothing in the Act asks an applicant to give up another nationality: loss of Swedish citizenship happens only at twenty-two under section 14 and by application under section 15.

Whether a short visit to Sweden needs a visa is settled by Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 and not by Swedish law: Annex I nationals need a visa to cross the external border, Annex II nationals are exempt for 90 days in any 180-day period. What Sweden writes for itself is the limit on staying. Chapter 2, section 5 of the Aliens Act says a foreigner who stays in Sweden for more than three months must hold a residence permit - months, where the Regulation and the Belgian, Dutch and Spanish records all count days. The Aliens Ordinance then adds a national list of people exempt from the visa requirement over and above the Regulation, and ends that list by pointing at the Regulation for the rest.

Sweden has no named visa for people living on their own money, and no amount attached to one. What it has is the third paragraph of chapter 5, section 5 of the Aliens Act: a residence permit may be granted to a foreigner whose support is arranged otherwise than through employment. That is the entire statutory basis. It names no sum, no source of income, no duration and no renewal, and the verb is may, not shall. The Aliens Ordinance confirms the route exists by writing a rule for the family of someone who holds such a permit, and that rule asks only that the family member's own support is arranged for the stay. Where Migrationsverket publishes a figure and a maximum length for people arriving with their own money, it is for a visit under chapter 5, section 10, which is a different permit: six months for a close relative, nine with special reasons, a year for a parent past working age.

Sweden has no residence permit for retired people. Chapter 5 of the Aliens Act was read in full and lists no ground that turns on age, on having stopped working, or on drawing a pension. A retiree with capital or a pension falls back on the same single sentence everyone else does - chapter 5, section 5, third paragraph, support arranged otherwise than through employment - and that sentence says nothing about pensions. Where a pension is named in the Act it is doing the opposite job: chapter 5, section 8 excuses a person entitled to an income-based retirement pension, a guarantee pension or old-age support from the self-support requirement that otherwise bars permanent residence, and the citizenship Act carries the matching excuse. The one route the agency describes for an older person arriving from abroad is a visit: a parent past working age visiting a child in Sweden may be given a permit for a total of one year.

Sweden's work permit turns on a salary figure that the Aliens Act states as a formula rather than an amount. Chapter 6, section 2 requires an employment contract, pay of at least 90 per cent of the median wage in Sweden at the time of the application, terms no worse than a Swedish collective agreement or the practice of the trade, and, for a stay of up to a year, comprehensive health insurance. Two things sit beside that. The Aliens Ordinance names occupations where the salary requirement does not apply and 75 per cent of the median applies instead - a list of twenty-four codes running from IT support technicians to assistant nurses, welders and forestry workers - and a separate rule for young technology and life-science companies. The same Ordinance bans work permits outright for two occupations: personal assistants and forest berry pickers. The permit must be applied for and granted before entry, runs for at most two years at a time, and is tied to one employer for the first two years and to one kind of work after that.

Sweden does not sell residence. There is no golden visa, no investment threshold and no fund in any instrument read here. What exists is a permit to run a business: chapter 5, section 10 a of the Aliens Act allows a time-limited residence permit for a foreigner who wishes to conduct business activity here, if that person has the ability to conduct the activity in question and can support themselves. Two conditions, no money figure, and a ceiling of two years at a time. Permanent residence follows from chapter 5, section 5, second paragraph after two years on such a permit, and only if the business is established. Everything a reader is usually told about this route - 200,000 kronor in a bank account, 100,000 more for a spouse and 50,000 for each child, ownership of at least 51 per cent of the company, good experience of the trade, and knowledge of Swedish or English - comes from Migrationsverket and from no instrument we have read.

A student permit in Sweden is not discretionary. Chapter 5 b, section 3 of the Aliens Act says a foreigner admitted to full-time studies at a higher-education institution in Sweden shall be granted a residence permit for higher-education studies, provided the tuition fees charged by the institution have been paid and none of the refusal grounds applies. The permit runs for at least a year or for the shorter period the studies last. The general conditions in section 9 ask for sufficient means for the stay and for the return journey, health insurance for a stay of a year or less, no threat to public order, security or health, and a guardian's consent for anyone under eighteen. After the degree, section 8 gives a further year to look for work or to examine starting a business, on a completed programme of at least two semesters and a diploma. The amount of money a student must show is not in the Act or the Ordinance: Migrationsverket publishes it, and it changes each year.

Chapter 3, section 3 of the Income Tax Act makes three kinds of person unlimitedly liable to Swedish tax: someone resident in Sweden, someone who stays here permanently, and someone with an essential connection to Sweden who was previously resident here. Unlimited liability means tax on all income, Swedish and foreign. What the Act conspicuously does not do is define the second test. There is no period anywhere in chapter 3 attached to stadigvarande vistelse; the six months everybody quotes comes from Skatteverket, which states it as a continuous period of six months or more, says a temporary absence abroad can count inside it, and says an absence of six months or more always breaks it. The third test is the one that catches people leaving. Section 7 lists ten factors for an essential connection - a home equipped for year-round use, family here, a business here, economic influence, real property - and then reverses the burden of proof: for five years after you leave you are presumed to have one, and it is for you to show you do not. That presumption applies only to Swedish citizens and to people who lived or stayed here for at least ten years.

Swedish health care is a duty laid on the regions, and chapter 8, section 1 of the Health and Medical Services Act states it in four words that decide everything: the region shall offer good health and medical care to the person who is resident within the region. Nationality is not mentioned. What is resident means is settled elsewhere, and both of the places that settle it use the same measure. The Population Registration Act says a person is resident here if they can be expected regularly to spend the night in the country for at least one year, and adds that a foreigner who needs a residence permit or a right of residence may be registered only once that condition is met. The Social Insurance Code says a person coming to Sweden who can be expected to stay for more than a year shall be considered resident here, and makes residence the trigger for nineteen listed benefits. Two things sit outside the one-year gate: emergency care, which the region must offer to anyone present in it, and care owed under the Union social-security coordination regulation to someone insured elsewhere in the EEA.

Chapter 4 a, section 1 of the Payment Services Act gives a consumer lawfully resident within the EEA the right not to be refused a payment account with the basic functions the bank offers other consumers. The right is not about nationality and not about Swedish residence: lawful residence anywhere in the EEA is the test. Two things take it away. The bank must refuse where opening the account would conflict with the Money Laundering Act, and it may refuse where there are special reasons. The Money Laundering Act is therefore the operative obstacle in practice: section 1 of its chapter 3 forbids a business from establishing a relationship at all unless it knows enough about the customer to manage the risk, and section 7 requires identification and verification from identity documents, register extracts or other information from an independent and reliable source. A decision is owed within ten banking days of a complete application, and a refusal must be given in writing with information about how to complain. Charges must be reasonable; unlike Belgium, Swedish law sets no maximum.

Sweden sorts foreign driving licences into exactly two classes and treats them completely differently. An EEA licence is valid here according to its content and can be exchanged for a Swedish one once you are permanently resident. Any other licence is a tredjelandskörkort - the Act defines it as a licence issued in a state outside the EEA - and since 1 May 2026 chapter 6, section 2 of the Driving Licence Act says such a licence ceases to be valid in Sweden once the holder has been registered in the population register for more than a year. Exchange is open to only four non-EEA issuers, named in chapter 6, section 7: the Faroe Islands, the United Kingdom, Japan and Switzerland. A licence from anywhere else cannot be exchanged at all, which means that after one year on the register the holder has to take a Swedish licence from the beginning. For the thirty-five countries of the Americas this site covers, that is the answer. While a foreign licence is still valid, a licence that is neither in the form of the Geneva or Vienna convention models nor written in English, German or French works only with a certified translation or an international driving permit, and a licence without a photograph works only with photographic identification.

Sweden 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 durable 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.