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RESIDENCY PERMITS

How to get permanent residency in Sweden

Exactly how to obtain the permanent right to live in Sweden depends on your citizenship and any existing permits. The process can appear complicated, but here are the key things to know about the main routes to permanent residency.

How to get permanent residency in Sweden
Photo: Janerik Henriksson/TT

EU citizens

If you’re an EU citizen studying, working in Sweden or with the means to support yourself in some other way, you automatically have right of residence in Sweden without needing to apply for any specific permit or proof. But you may still be able to apply for a permanent residence permit (uppehållstillstånd), and there are a few benefits to applying for permanent residence, including added security in case you find yourself no longer fitting into those categories in future.

As for non-EU citizens, again permanent residence gives extra security once you are eligible to apply.

Permanent residence: EU citizens who have lived in Sweden at least five years

As previously mentioned, all EU citizens working, studying or with the means to support themselves have the right of residence in Sweden without applying for a permit, although you do need to register yourself as living in Sweden with Sweden’s Tax Agency within three months of your arrival.

After five years of living in Sweden, people in this category automatically gain “permanent right of residence”.

This secures your right to stay in the country even if you stop being able to support yourself. A certificate confirming that permanent right of residence can be issued for no fee upon request by filling out the form “Intyg om permanent uppehållsrätt”, found here.

If you have right of residence as a family member of an EU citizen and have lived together with a close relative in Sweden for at least five years, then you may also meet the criteria for permanent right of residence.


The Swedish Migration Agency office in Solna. Photo: Adam Wrafter/SvD/TT

Long-term resident status: non-EU citizens

There are several different options for non-EU citizens, which depend on which type of permit you have previously lived in Sweden on.

Non-EU citizens who have lived in Sweden for five years with a valid residence permit and can prove they were capable of supporting themselves and their family during that time can also apply for long-term resident status by filling in the form “Ansökan om status som varaktigt bosatt”, found here.

Long-term resident status is valid for as long as the person resides in Sweden, but your long-term resident status may be withdrawn after six years of living away from the country.

Permanent residence: non-EU citizens and EU citizens without EU right of residence

You can only apply for permanent residence after a minimum of three years in Sweden as a general rule, with some exceptions, such as for self-employed people who can apply after two years. The exact time and requirements depend on which type of permit you are on, but in practice most people can only apply for permanent residence after at least four years in Sweden.

If your residence permit in Sweden is based on you being the family member of a Swede, you can technically apply for permanent residence after three years in Sweden, although you can only apply for permanent residence when renewing your temporary residence permit. This means you’re likely to have to wait for four years before you can apply. The application costs 2,000 kronor for adults and 1,000 kronor for children. 

If you have lived in Sweden with a residence permit for doctoral studies for at least four years out of the past seven, you can also apply for permanent residence. Again, you must be able to prove you can support yourself financially. This application costs 1,500 kronor.

If you have lived in Sweden on a work permit, you can apply for a permanent residence permit when you extend this permit if you have worked for at least four years out of the last seven.

You need to meet the same requirements as for an extension of your temporary work permit (for example, meeting minimum salary requirements) and you also need to meet the special requirements for permanent residence, including being able to support yourself financially and having lived an “orderly life”. It costs 2,200 kronor to extend a work permit, plus an extra 1,500 kronor per adult and 750 kronor per child if you have family members applying with you.

If you are self-employed, you can apply for a permanent residence permit after two years when it is time to renew your temporary permit. You need to be able to support yourself financially on the income from the company, spend more than six months of each year in Sweden, own at least 50 percent of your Swedish company, and be living an orderly life. The fee is 2,000 kronor.

There are a few exceptions to the fees for permanent residence permits. EU/EEA citizens, and citizens of Japan are exempt from all application fees; doctoral students with certain scholarships are exempt from the fees; and family members of non-Swedish EU/EEA nationals are exempt from the fee for family member permits, for example.

Member comments

  1. What does the requirement to “live an orderly” life include, apart from the obvious no criminal record and no debt?

  2. Hi 🙂

    What about a person that is not a EU citizen that is working in Sweden Married to Nordic Citizen living in Sweden together and the Nordic citizen is a Student in Denmark but living in Malmö for exemple ? But the Danish Person has now been a Swedish citizen since 2 years prior.
    Can this person( me 😉 apply for permanent Residency after 2 years or after 3 years or after 4 years or after 5 years ? for and what about citizenship Can I or others apply after 2 years since I have been living with Swedish citizen for at least 2 years ? I have spoken to so many people about this I can not get clear response even the Swedish lawyer I paid for had to ask her friend from Migrationsverket and the response was not that clear. I understand Your all journalists and don’t have all the answers 🙂 since you even knew about the acceptions for Japanese people I figured it could not hurt to ask your team and perhaps Nordic citizen and there partners could be aded to future articles and future updates of articles about permanent Residency and articles about Swedish citizenship please and thank you 🙂

    – Vince from Canada –

    Ps I work a Personal assistant and my wife is University student studying to become a teacher in Copenhagen. We are not so wealthy at the moment I don’t know if even financially make enough money for residency or citizenship and the both still Learning Swedish I am not sur what the language requirements are for me ? Since my Wife is now Danish and Swedish we are kind of lost I Imagine other Nordics and there partners looking for information about this subject are also not finding clear information about this particular cases. Thank you again sorry I write to much.

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For members

WORKING IN SWEDEN

Swedish Centre Party leader: Work permit salary threshold a ‘human catastrophe’

Centre Party leader Muharrem Demirok branded plans to further raise Sweden's work permit salary threshold 'a human catastrophe' in an interview with The Local's Sweden in Focus podcast.

Swedish Centre Party leader: Work permit salary threshold a 'human catastrophe'

In November last year, Sweden’s work permit salary threshold was raised from 13,000 kronor to 27,000 kronor a month.

Last month, the government announced plans to raise the work permit salary threshold once again, this time to Sweden’s median salary, which is currently 34,200 kronor.

Demirok said Sweden was already seeing the impact of the first hike, highlighting the country’s welfare sector as one example.

“I’ve visited a couple of cities in Sweden where they had to lay off people from care homes, where they had to send them back. They’d been here a long time working and paying taxes, without them our welfare wouldn’t go around. And all of a sudden, just because they made a couple of thousand less than this threshold, they had to be sent out,” he told The Local.

He slammed the government’s plans to further raise the threshold as a “human catastrophe” for those who will lose their jobs or be forced to leave Sweden.

“It’s going to be devastating for our welfare system, but also for other companies, not least in the green sector, it’s hard to find the labour force as it is. And if you can’t get the expertise you want, it’s going to hinder you from growing, and it’s going to make businesses go out of business,” Demirok said.

“I don’t even know why the government is doing this, it’s just giving up to the Sweden Democrats, because everyone, both the public sector and business sector, agrees that this is stupid politics.”

There has been pressure to limit labour migration across the political spectrum in recent years, with the Centre Party among the most outspoken critics against tightening up Sweden’s liberal labour migration laws.

The ruling Moderates were responsible for liberalising the work permit system in the first place when they were in government under Fredrik Reinfeldt 2006-2014 as part of the Alliance with the Christian Democrats, Liberals and Centre.

“We might be alone in parliament on this now, but we used to have friends in the Moderates, Christian Democrats and the Liberals. We used to agree on this. From the left, it’s easy to understand – if you bring in people from other countries, you also have to liberalise the labour policy in Sweden, and if you’re such good friends with the unions you don’t want to do that,” Demirok said.

“But I still can’t understand why the Moderates and Liberals are against it.”

According to Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard, from the Moderates, the move is an attempt to free up low-paid positions for people already in the country.

“This will mean that more people who are already in Sweden, but can’t yet support themselves financially, will be able to take jobs which actually exist,” she said in October 2023.

Demirok argues that this isn’t realistic.

“If it was that simple, these people would be in work now. They wouldn’t be unemployed. Getting someone to work in a restaurant as a chef or working in a farm or in a hotel, you have to be skilled, you can’t just come in and work as a highly skilled chef in a restaurant,” he added.

When the 27,000 kronor threshold was introduced in November, many of The Local’s readers criticised the decision. The government’s plans to further hike the threshold would include some exceptions for certain categories of workers, although the details are not yet clear.

The proposal, submitted to Malmer Stenergard last month, has a suggested implementation date of June 1st, 2025, if it goes ahead.

For work permit renewals, current rules (80 percent of the median salary) will continue to apply for any applications for extensions submitted to the Migration Agency by June 1st, 2026, at the latest.

Listen to the full interview with Muharrem Demirok below:

Or follow Sweden in Focus wherever you listen to podcasts. 

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