NextSpring

Where Your Licence Was Issued Decides Everything, and a Third-Country Licence Now Dies After a Year on the Register

Answer

The general rule applies to you

No exception is recorded for citizens of Honduras on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.

127 exceptions recorded across 48 countries · none match Honduras to Sweden · Driving and licence exchange

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.

Verified with official sourceActively changing right nowlast checked 2026-10-10

At a glance

Is your foreign licence valid on arrival
Yes, according to its content

Chapter 6, section 1 of the Driving Licence Act, for an EEA licence and for other foreign licences alike.

When a non-EEA licence stops working
More than one year after you are entered in the population registeras of 2026-05-01

Chapter 6, section 2, first paragraph, point 5 of the Driving Licence Act, inserted by Lag (2026:77), in force from 1 May 2026.

Which licences Sweden will exchange
EEA licences, and licences issued in the Faroe Islands, the United Kingdom, Japan or Switzerland

Chapter 6, section 7, first paragraph, point 1 of the Driving Licence Act. The list is closed.

Licences from the Americas
None of the thirty-five countries covered here is on the exchange list

Chapter 6, section 7 names four non-EEA issuers and none of them is in the Americas. Transportstyrelsen says the same in its own words.

What happens if you cannot exchange
A Swedish licence from the beginning once the year runs out

The Act gives no alternative: chapter 6, section 2 makes the licence invalid and chapter 6, section 7 does not reach it.

During an exchange application
The licence stays valid

Chapter 6, section 2, second paragraph of the Driving Licence Act.

Translation or international permit
Needed for a licence outside the convention forms and not in English, German or French

Chapter 6, section 1, second paragraph of the Driving Licence Act. Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are accepted as translation languages.

Minimum ages on a foreign licence
15 for a moped, 18 for a car

Chapter 6, section 3 of the Driving Licence Act, which also bars anyone who is not an EEA national from driving a Swedish-registered lorry or bus commercially.

Requirements

  • A licence valid in the state that issued it
  • For continued validity past one year on the population register, an EEA licence or an application for exchange in progress
  • For exchange, permanent residence in Sweden and a licence from the EEA, the Faroe Islands, the United Kingdom, Japan or Switzerland
  • For a licence not in a convention form and not in English, German or French, a certified translation or an international driving permit

Country-level policy

One Registration Decides Your Health Care, Your Driving Licence and Your Benefits

Almost everything a person moving to Sweden wants turns on a single administrative act that is not an immigration decision at all: being entered in the population register. Section 3 of the Population Registration Act makes that turn on one test - whether you can be expected regularly to spend the night in the country for at least a year - and section 4 says a foreigner who needs a permit or a right of residence can only be registered once that condition is met. From there the consequences run outwards. Health care is owed by the region to the person resident within it. Residence-based social insurance opens for a person expected to stay more than a year, and benefits reach back only three months before the agency was told. And since 1 May 2026 the register works in the other direction too: a driving licence issued outside the EEA stops being valid in Sweden once its holder has been registered for more than a year. Registration is what makes a person present here into a person living here, and it is the same one-year expectation in all three statutes.

What applies to you

Nothing changes for a citizen of Honduras

We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.

What the law says

Text layer - verbatim verifiedKörkortslag (1998:488) · 1 kap. 4 §
«tredjelandskörkort: ett körkort som är utfärdat i en stat utanför EES.»

Our translation - not official

third-country driving licence: a driving licence issued in a state outside the EEA.

The definition that does the work. Everything on this topic turns on which side of the EEA line the issuing state sits.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.

Standing: Maintains the text in force

Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.

We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source

Text layer - verbatim verifiedKörkortslag (1998:488) · 6 kap. 1 §, första stycket
«Ett utländskt EES-körkort gäller i Sverige enligt sitt innehåll.»

Our translation - not official

A foreign EEA driving licence is valid in Sweden according to its content.

An EEA licence works here on its own terms.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.

Standing: Maintains the text in force

Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.

We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source

Text layer - verbatim verifiedKörkortslag (1998:488) · 6 kap. 1 §, andra stycket
«Även andra utländska körkort gäller i Sverige enligt sitt innehåll.»

Our translation - not official

Other foreign driving licences are also valid in Sweden according to their content.

So does every other foreign licence - for as long as section 2 lets it.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.

Standing: Maintains the text in force

Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.

We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source

Text layer - verbatim verifiedKörkortslag (1998:488) · 6 kap. 1 §, andra stycket
«Om körkortet inte är utformat i överensstämmelse med någon av förebilderna i de konventioner om vägtrafik som har undertecknats i Genève den 19 september 1949 respektive i Wien den 8 november 1968, och inte heller är utfärdat på engelska, tyska eller franska, gäller dock körkortet endast tillsammans med»

The condition on a non-convention licence, and the two ways out of it follow: a certified translation or an international driving permit.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.

Standing: Maintains the text in force

Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.

We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source

Text layer - verbatim verifiedKörkortslag (1998:488) · 6 kap. 1 §, tredje stycket
«Ett körkort som inte är försett med ett fotografi av körkortshavaren gäller endast tillsammans med en identitetshandling med fotografi.»

Our translation - not official

A driving licence not bearing a photograph of the licence holder is valid only together with a photographic identity document.

A separate condition about photographs, which catches licences that are otherwise in order.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.

Standing: Maintains the text in force

Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.

We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source

Text layer - verbatim verifiedKörkortslag (1998:488) · 6 kap. 2 §, första stycket 5, införd genom lag (2026:77)
«det är ett tredjelandskörkort och körkortshavaren är folkbokförd i Sverige sedan mer än ett år.»

Our translation - not official

it is a third-country driving licence and the licence holder has been entered in the Swedish population register for more than one year.

The expiry rule. It is measured from entry in the population register, not from arrival in the country and not from the date on the licence.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.

Standing: Maintains the text in force

Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.

We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source

Text layer - verbatim verifiedKörkortslag (1998:488) · 6 kap. 2 §, andra stycket
«Körkortet är inte ogiltigt enligt första stycket 5 under den tid en ansökan om utbyte enligt 7 § prövas.»

Our translation - not official

The licence is not invalid under the first paragraph, point 5, while an application for exchange under section 7 is being determined.

The pause while an exchange is decided, which matters only to someone whose licence is on the exchange list.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.

Standing: Maintains the text in force

Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.

We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source

Text layer - verbatim verifiedKörkortslag (1998:488) · 6 kap. 7 §, första stycket 1
«är permanent bosatt i Sverige och körkortet är ett utländskt EES-körkort eller är utfärdat i Färöarna, Förenade kungariket, Japan eller Schweiz, eller»

Our translation - not official

is permanently resident in Sweden and the licence is a foreign EEA driving licence or was issued in the Faroe Islands, the United Kingdom, Japan or Switzerland, or

The exchange list, closed and stated by name. Four non-EEA issuers, and no mechanism in the Act for adding to them.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.

Standing: Maintains the text in force

Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.

We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source

Text layer - verbatim verifiedKörkortslag (1998:488) · 6 kap. 7 b §, första stycket 1
«körkortshavaren har haft ett körkort med motsvarande körkorts-behörighet utfärdat i en eller flera stater inom EES i minst fem år innan den permanenta bosättningen i Sverige»

The anti-laundering rule for an EEA licence that itself came from a third-country exchange. Five years of EEA licence-holding before settling in Sweden is one of three ways past it.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.

Standing: Maintains the text in force

Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.

We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source

Text layer - verbatim verifiedKörkortslag (1998:488) · 6 kap. 3 §
«Ett utländskt körkort medför inte rätt att köra moped innan innehavaren har fyllt 15 år eller bil innan innehavaren har fyllt 18 år.»

Our translation - not official

A foreign driving licence does not confer the right to drive a moped before the holder has reached the age of 15, or a car before the holder has reached the age of 18.

Ages applied to the foreign licence regardless of what the issuing state allowed.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.

Standing: Maintains the text in force

Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.

We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source

Text layer - verbatim verifiedKörkortsförordning (1998:980) · 6 kap. 7 §
«En ansökan om att byta ut ett utländskt körkort ska göras skriftligen.»

Our translation - not official

An application to exchange a foreign driving licence shall be made in writing.

The exchange is a paper application to Transportstyrelsen, with the foreign licence itself sent in.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.

Standing: Maintains the text in force

Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.

We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source

Text layer - verbatim verifiedKörkortsförordning (1998:980) · 6 kap. 7 §, punkt 2
«en handling som visar att sökanden är permanent bosatt i Sverige»

Our translation - not official

a document showing that the applicant is permanently resident in Sweden

What must be attached, and what the exchange therefore presupposes.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.

Standing: Maintains the text in force

Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.

We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source

Text layer - verbatim verifiedKörkortsförordning (1998:980) · 6 kap. 7 d §
«Vid en ansökan om att byta ut eller ersätta ett körkort som har utfärdats i Färöarna, Förenade kungariket, Japan eller Schweiz får Transportstyrelsen förelägga sökanden att lämna in en utredning som styrker att körkortet är giltigt i den stat där det har utfärdats.»

The four named issuers again, this time with a proof-of-validity power attached to them.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.

Standing: Maintains the text in force

Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.

We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source

Text layer - verbatim verifiedLag (2026:77) om ändring i körkortslagen (1998:488) · Ikraftträdandebestämmelse
«Denna lag träder i kraft den 1 maj 2026.»

The date the one-year expiry rule began to apply, read in the amending Act as published.

Read it at the source
About this source

The authentic Swedish statute book, published by the Government Offices. It serves each Act and ordinance as it was promulgated, as a PDF carrying the SFS number, the date of publication, the date of issue, the text of the amendments it makes and its own entry-into-force provision. This is the only place an amending Act's commencement date can be read where riksdagen's consolidated page does not print transitional provisions. The files sit at /sites/default/files/sfs/YYYY-MM/SFSYYYY-NNN.pdf, where YYYY-MM is the month of publication rather than the month of issue, and they carry a real text layer.

Standing: Issues the instrument

Cannot be cited for: It publishes acts as promulgated and never consolidates: an amending Act read here shows what was changed, not the resulting provision, and citing it as the law in force is the Irish mistake this site has already made once. The electronic Svensk författningssamling begins on 1 April 2018; nothing from before that was found at these addresses. Every HTML page on the site - the front page, the search, the document pages at /doc/, even /sitemap.xml - is answered with a Cloudflare 403 carrying an Attention Required interstitial, so the site cannot be searched or browsed by any tool this project has. Only the static PDF paths reach the origin, which means an SFS number and its month of publication have to be known in advance, and the month has to be found by trying. A wrong path returns the site's own Swedish 404 page with HTTP 404, which is distinguishable from the 403 and is how the two failures were told apart.

We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source

Text layer - verbatim verifiedTransportstyrelsen, agency guidance · Transportstyrelsen, Byta ut körkort från Förenade kungariket, Färöarna, Japan eller Schweiz
«Körkort från andra länder utanför EES kan inte bytas ut mot ett svenskt körkort.»

The agency saying the closed list is closed.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Swedish Transport Agency, which decides the validity in Sweden of a foreign driving licence and every application to exchange one. Its pages set out which issuers can be exchanged, what the application must carry, and where it is sent, and its sitemap at /sitemap.xml lists the whole site.

Standing: Applies the rule

Cannot be cited for: It is the agency and not the Act, and on this topic the two do not agree. Its page says a licence from the United Kingdom or the Faroe Islands may go on being used after more than a year on the population register; chapter 6, section 2 of the Körkortslag makes no such exception, and those two place names appear in the Act only in the exchange provisions. Until the instrument creating that exception is found, the sentence may be cited only as the agency's own statement. The agency also uses permanent bosättning, which is a licence concept, where the Act's expiry rule uses folkbokförd, which is a register concept, and the two are not the same test.

We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source

Text layer - verbatim verifiedTransportstyrelsen, agency guidance · Transportstyrelsen, Byta ut körkort från Förenade kungariket, Färöarna, Japan eller Schweiz
«Körkort från länder utanför EES slutar gälla i Sverige ett år från den dag du blev folkbokförd här.»

The agency's statement of the expiry rule, in the same terms as the Act.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Swedish Transport Agency, which decides the validity in Sweden of a foreign driving licence and every application to exchange one. Its pages set out which issuers can be exchanged, what the application must carry, and where it is sent, and its sitemap at /sitemap.xml lists the whole site.

Standing: Applies the rule

Cannot be cited for: It is the agency and not the Act, and on this topic the two do not agree. Its page says a licence from the United Kingdom or the Faroe Islands may go on being used after more than a year on the population register; chapter 6, section 2 of the Körkortslag makes no such exception, and those two place names appear in the Act only in the exchange provisions. Until the instrument creating that exception is found, the sentence may be cited only as the agency's own statement. The agency also uses permanent bosättning, which is a licence concept, where the Act's expiry rule uses folkbokförd, which is a register concept, and the two are not the same test.

We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source

Text layer - verbatim verifiedTransportstyrelsen, agency guidance · Transportstyrelsen, Byta ut körkort från Förenade kungariket, Färöarna, Japan eller Schweiz
«Om du har ett körkort från Förenade kungariket eller Färöarna kan du använda det i Sverige, även om du har varit folkbokförd i landet i mer än ett år.»

A carve-out the agency states and the Act does not. Chapter 6, section 2 of the Driving Licence Act makes no exception for the United Kingdom or the Faroe Islands, and the words Färöarna and Förenade kungariket appear in the Act only in sections 7 and 7 b, which are about exchange. We have not found the instrument that creates this exception.

Read it at the source
About this source

The Swedish Transport Agency, which decides the validity in Sweden of a foreign driving licence and every application to exchange one. Its pages set out which issuers can be exchanged, what the application must carry, and where it is sent, and its sitemap at /sitemap.xml lists the whole site.

Standing: Applies the rule

Cannot be cited for: It is the agency and not the Act, and on this topic the two do not agree. Its page says a licence from the United Kingdom or the Faroe Islands may go on being used after more than a year on the population register; chapter 6, section 2 of the Körkortslag makes no such exception, and those two place names appear in the Act only in the exchange provisions. Until the instrument creating that exception is found, the sentence may be cited only as the agency's own statement. The agency also uses permanent bosättning, which is a licence concept, where the Act's expiry rule uses folkbokförd, which is a register concept, and the two are not the same test.

We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source

Practical notes

Transportstyrelsen says a licence from the United Kingdom or the Faroe Islands may go on being used after more than a year on the population register. The Driving Licence Act as read contains no such exception, and a search of the whole Act found those two place names only in the exchange provisions. A reader relying on the agency's sentence should treat it as the agency's and not as the Act's.

The expiry rule counts from registration in the population register. Someone who never registers never starts the clock, but they also cannot exchange, because exchange asks for proof of permanent residence here.

What a Swedish licence from the beginning involves - the learner's permit, the risk training, the theory and driving tests - is governed by chapters 2 to 4 of the Act, which were read in outline only and are not covered by this record.

Sources4 · all accessed 2026-10-10
  • consolidates
    Körkortslag (1998:488), consolidated text as amended to SFS 2026:469

    Sveriges riksdag, Dokument och lagar

    About this source

    The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.

    Standing: Maintains the text in force

    Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.

    We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source

  • consolidates
    Körkortsförordning (1998:980), consolidated text as amended to SFS 2026:470

    Sveriges riksdag, Dokument och lagar

    About this source

    The Swedish parliament's public database of the Svensk författningssamling, serving every Act and ordinance as a single consolidated page at a stable address of the form /sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/<slug>_sfs-YYYY-NNN/. Each record prints the SFS number, the department responsible, the date of issue and an Ändrad line naming the last amending SFS incorporated, and each amended section carries in its own body the Act that gave it its present wording. Provisions not yet in force are printed alongside the current text and marked /Träder i kraft I:<date>/, and repealed sections are kept in place reading Har upphävts genom lag (YYYY:NNN), so the page shows what has gone as well as what is there. Transitional provisions are printed at the foot under Övergångsbestämmelser, but only for those amending Acts that have them.

    Standing: Maintains the text in force

    Cannot be cited for: The Ändrad line names the last amendment incorporated. It is not a sweep date and must not be recorded as a consolidation cut-off: it says nothing about when the page was last checked against the statute book. The consolidations are unofficial - the authentic text is the Svensk författningssamling as published by the Government Offices - and riksdagen prints a link to the Government Offices' own full text beside each record. An amending Act's own entry-into-force date is usually not on the page at all: where the Act has no transitional provisions, the date has to be read in the SFS as published. Where a section exists in several future versions the page prints them all, so an article number alone does not identify the text in force. The site is a Next.js application serving the whole statute inside the initial HTML; the extraction service returns nothing at all for some of the larger documents, which has to be met with a direct fetch rather than read as an absence.

    We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source

  • issues
    SFS 2026:77, Lag om ändring i körkortslagen (1998:488), as published

    Svensk författningssamling, Regeringskansliet

    About this source

    The authentic Swedish statute book, published by the Government Offices. It serves each Act and ordinance as it was promulgated, as a PDF carrying the SFS number, the date of publication, the date of issue, the text of the amendments it makes and its own entry-into-force provision. This is the only place an amending Act's commencement date can be read where riksdagen's consolidated page does not print transitional provisions. The files sit at /sites/default/files/sfs/YYYY-MM/SFSYYYY-NNN.pdf, where YYYY-MM is the month of publication rather than the month of issue, and they carry a real text layer.

    Standing: Issues the instrument

    Cannot be cited for: It publishes acts as promulgated and never consolidates: an amending Act read here shows what was changed, not the resulting provision, and citing it as the law in force is the Irish mistake this site has already made once. The electronic Svensk författningssamling begins on 1 April 2018; nothing from before that was found at these addresses. Every HTML page on the site - the front page, the search, the document pages at /doc/, even /sitemap.xml - is answered with a Cloudflare 403 carrying an Attention Required interstitial, so the site cannot be searched or browsed by any tool this project has. Only the static PDF paths reach the origin, which means an SFS number and its month of publication have to be known in advance, and the month has to be found by trying. A wrong path returns the site's own Swedish 404 page with HTTP 404, which is distinguishable from the 403 and is how the two failures were told apart.

    We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source

  • administers
    Byta ut körkort från Förenade kungariket, Färöarna, Japan eller Schweiz

    Transportstyrelsen

    About this source

    The Swedish Transport Agency, which decides the validity in Sweden of a foreign driving licence and every application to exchange one. Its pages set out which issuers can be exchanged, what the application must carry, and where it is sent, and its sitemap at /sitemap.xml lists the whole site.

    Standing: Applies the rule

    Cannot be cited for: It is the agency and not the Act, and on this topic the two do not agree. Its page says a licence from the United Kingdom or the Faroe Islands may go on being used after more than a year on the population register; chapter 6, section 2 of the Körkortslag makes no such exception, and those two place names appear in the Act only in the exchange provisions. Until the instrument creating that exception is found, the sentence may be cited only as the agency's own statement. The agency also uses permanent bosättning, which is a licence concept, where the Act's expiry rule uses folkbokförd, which is a register concept, and the two are not the same test.

    We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source