If you are waiting for a decision on your Swedish citizenship, one date matters more than the rest. It is 6 June 2026. From that day, Migrationsverket (the Swedish Migration Agency, which decides citizenship) judges every open case by the new, stricter rules.
More than 103,000 people are in that queue. If your case was not decided before 6 June 2026, the new requirements apply to you. That is true even if you sent your application in years ago, under the old rules.
How long the queue is
Migrationsverket had 103,146 open citizenship cases in April 2026. Its own handläggningstid (the estimated waiting time) for adults is 56 months for three out of four recently decided cases.
Cases decided in January and February 2026 took 1,021 days on average. Migrationsverket says that number is misleading. It is clearing the oldest cases first, and those old cases pull the average up.
The agency wants to decide 55,000 cases in 2026. It also expects about 60,000 new applications in the same year. So the queue is not shrinking fast.
Why 6 June 2026 changes your case
The rules that started on 6 June 2026 are the biggest change to Swedish citizenship in decades. As a main rule you now need eight years of hemvist (the time you have lived in Sweden), not five. There is a self-support requirement. And there is a knowledge requirement about Swedish society.
The list of what the new law asks for is longer than this. You can read the full set on our citizenship requirements page.
The important part for the queue is that there is no grace period. Migrationsverket applies the new rules to a case the moment it is decided after 6 June 2026, not the rules from the day you applied.
The Swedish Migration Agency will assess all cases that have not been decided before 6 June 2026 according to the new rules.
The agency also states plainly that there are no transitional arrangements. So a case that has waited three years is judged by the same new rules as one sent in this week.
What you can do now
You cannot pay to move up the queue. Migrationsverket does not speed up a case because the rules changed. What you can do is check that your application is complete, so a missing paper does not delay it further.
If you met the old rules but may not meet the new ones, this is worth putting to Migrationsverket or a qualified lawyer. Only they can tell you how the new law applies to your own case.
Sources
Official details can change. Always confirm what applies to your own case directly with the responsible authority.
