Sweden in Focus

This week: Why are the Social Democrats acting like bit players? Why have a mother-to-be and an active father been told to leave Sweden? Are immigration laws scaring off foreign workers? And what do you need to know about All Saints' Day in Sweden? There was a time when getting married to a Swede was an easy way to stay in Sweden. But these days it's a bit more complicated than that, host...

This week's Sweden in Focus Extra podcast features an interview with Matilda Molander, head of the green and liberal Fores think tank. Not yet a member of The Local? Join now with this special offer for podcast listeners . Sweden's Centre Party emerged from the 2026 election as a potential kingmaker and leader Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist has expressed a preference for the Social Democrats&#3...

This week: Halloween in Sweden, Swedish media coverage of the Tidö government’s migration crackdown, our favourite Swedish children’s books, efforts to form Sweden’s next government, and a language quiz. The last four years have seen sweeping change for immigrants in Sweden. For many of The Local's readers, the lack of transitional rules in the new citizenship law caused untold stress. The sam...

This week’s Sweden in Focus Extra features an interview with Brenda and Marcus Ramström, a couple in western Sweden who speak to The Local days before she is forced to return to her native Brazil following a Migration Court ruling. Not yet a member of The Local? Join now with this special offer for podcast listeners . Brenda Ramström, a former Northvolt worker, is 21 weeks pregnant as she boards a...

This week: First month post-election ends with no government, breakthrough on ending teen deportations, a plan to help citizenship applicants hit retroactively by the new law, and a reminder of some of the best things about living in Sweden. More than a month has passed since Sweden’s election, and we still don’t have a government. As we were recording this week's episode, the Social Democrat...

This week’s Sweden in Focus Extra features an interview with AI consultant Anna Bärlund, who won an appeal last week against her Swedish citizenship rejection. Not yet a member of The Local? Join now with this special offer for podcast listeners . On June 6th, Sweden rolled out major new citizenship reforms that included increasing the length of time that the partners of Swedish citizens have to l...

This week: Tortuous efforts to form a government, plans to stop teen deportations, how new rules on family reunification could make life harder for university researchers, and what do The Local’s readers miss most when living in Sweden? The four parties that claimed victory in the election are still a long way from forming a government, but there has been movement this week as they agreed to meet...

Not yet a member of The Local? Join now with this special offer for podcast listeners . Gift Blessing is only 24 years old, but has already achieved an enormous amount. He is a rapper, an author, a newspaper columnist, and a poet. He came to Sweden as a quota refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo as a young child. He broke through to public consciousness in 2021 with a bravura rap performa...

Magdalena Andersson was acclaimed as the winner of Sweden’s election. Four parties – adding up to a majority – said they wanted her to be prime minister, and she was charged by the speaker with forming a government. Yet on Monday she threw in the towel. The immediate pretext was the decision by the Left Party to support the re-election of speaker Andreas Norlén, a Moderate, over the Social Democra...

Not yet a member of The Local? Join now with this special offer for podcast listeners . Sweden's government tightened rules for citizenship earlier this year without transitional rules for people who had already applied. The new rules require eight years of residency instead of five for most applicants, and would-be citizens must now pass language and civics tests. The Migration Court in Malmö...

In this week's podcast: Electoral fraud allegations, complex coalition building, Candy Crush maker faces strike action, and how do Swedes say 'Digestive biscuit'? Negotiations between the centre-left parties are ongoing after they won a wafer thin majority in last week’s election. But now a voter fraud scandal involving the Left Party threatens to derail the whole process. Police are i...

In this week’s Sweden in Focus Extra, The Local's Mandy Pipher tells us about the bureaucratic nightmare surrounding her recent trip to Canada.  Living in Sweden on a residence permit can be a risky business, not least given that almost everyone who does so has strong connections to another country and needs to travel frequently. But if your residency card is in the process of being renewed w...

This week: Final election results, far right blames immigrants for loss, and what the election outcome means for foreigners in Sweden.   200,000 foreigners who have become Swedish citizens are to blame for Sweden’s tiny swing to the left – and in particular for the losses suffered by the Sweden Democrats. That’s the claim being made by the party as it grapples with a surprise electoral r...

All three parties in the governing coalition increased their vote share while the Sweden Democrats lost ground. On the left, meanwhile, the Social Democrats had a terrible election, while all the other parties had something to celebrate. So why did the government parties do better than expected? What went wrong for the two biggest parties on the right and left? And what is Sweden's next government...

In this week’s Sweden in Focus Extra our panelists try to make sense of a dizzying election night. Sweden’s election threw up some major surprises on Sunday night. The Liberals cleared the parliamentary threshold by a respectable margin having languished way beneath the four percent limit ever since the last election. The Social Democrats are seemingly on course for their worst election ever – but...

This week: Joy for Liberals as support swells, Sweden Democrats and Left Party hit by scandals, immigration in focus in TV debate, billionaires duel over which side to back, and poor school results throw a spanner in the works.  Two of Sweden’s wealthiest people, Jacob Wallenberg and Martin Lorentzon, warned in the Financial Times this week about the risks of a left-wing government. Another,...

Today's episode of Sweden in Focus Extra features an interview with Ludvig Aspling, migration spokesperson for the Sweden Democrats.  This week we are turning a spotlight on the two parties most likely to shape Sweden’s immigration policy after the September 13th election. Yesterday we heard from Ida Karkiainen , the Social Democrats’ immigration spokesperson. Today we’ll hear a conversation...

This week’s episode of Sweden in Focus Extra features an interview with Ida Karkiainen, migration spokesperson for the Social Democrats.  With the Swedish election just days away, the podcast this week features conversations The Local's Richard Orange had recently with two of the people in with a strong chance of becoming Sweden’s next migration minister: Ida Karkiainen of the Social Democrat...

This week: Right closing the gap on Sweden's left-wing opposition, party pledges explained, and could an extremist in Örebro get into the Riksdag? Oh, and fermented herring season is upon us. A poll released this week showed the Sweden's government further closing the gap on the opposition. An election that looked like a foregone conclusion is now anything but.  Host James Savage is joined th...

This week: Sweden in shock after school sword attack, Sweden Democrats say no to tactical voting, Migration Agency weighs in on Brexit deportations, and what do foreign parents find strange about Swedish schools? Host James Savage is joined this week by panelists Emma Löfgren and Becky Waterton.  Here are links to some of the topics discussed in the episode: 2026 Swedish election  Libera...

For a recent article on the real-life effects of Sweden's immigration laws on families in Sweden, The Local's Mandy Pipher spoke with a Swedish-American couple who are both biological scientists and living in Uppsala. The pair met a decade ago when Anna-Karin moved to Chicago for a postdoctoral position in immunology and flu vaccine research. Chris, also a biologist, was finishing his immunology P...

In this week's episode: Sweden Democrats campaign hard, Brexit deportations, citizenship tests and the "caterpillar from hell".  With just over three weeks to go until Sweden’s election, the campaign is intensifying. But reaching voters is trickier than usual this year thanks to new EU limits on political advertising. This might explain an explosion of political posters, sponsored buses and c...

Gustav Magnuson and Luisa Fernandez met in Costa Rica in 2018 when Gustav was there on a cycling trip of Central and South America. The two felt such a strong and immediate connection that Gustav never made it farther south on his cycling tour. Instead, he stayed with Louisa in San Jose. A few years later the two were married and are now living in Stockholm with their one-year-old child. In an int...

This was the week in which the Swedish election campaign started to take some kind of shape. If the focus in 2022 was all crime and immigration, this time it looks like the economy is taking centre stage. What are the big differences between the parties, and what might all this mean for how the election develops? We also look this week at revelations about spies’ activities in Sweden and we ask wh...

Sweden in Focus is back! James Savage, Richard Orange and Mandy Pipher look chew over the latest from Sweden, including: Scandal hits Sweden Democrats and Left Party  Is tipping now the norm in Sweden? How do you eat a crayfish? The Sweden Democrats' Ludvig Aspling tells us why he thinks high-skilled immigrants don't care about citizenship. Articles discussed in this episode: 'I feel shame an...