On 1 January 2024, foreign citizens and stateless people made up 7.9%^* of the people living in Sweden, against 9.6%^* across the EU — the 18th highest share of the 27 EU states that publish it.

The largest single foreign citizenship among residents is Poland: 54,617 people on 1 January 2025.

In 2024, 116,197 people moved to Sweden and 86,449 left: a difference of 29,748^*, more arrivals than departures.

Citizens and foreigners

Residents of Sweden on 1 January 2024, by the citizenship they hold. Every line is a separate figure Eurostat publishes; the site adds none of them together.

Residents of Sweden by citizenship, 1 January 2024
Citizenship	People	Share of residents
All residents	10,551,707	—
Foreign citizens and stateless peopleOne group Eurostat publishes, shown beside the lines below	834,339	7.9%^*
Citizens of Sweden	9,707,612	92.0%^*
Citizens of other EU countries	313,162	3.0%^*
Citizens of countries outside the EU	512,595	4.9%^*
Stateless people	8,582	0.08%^*
Citizenship not stated	9,756	0.09%^*

Against the other EU states

Foreign citizens and stateless people as a share of residents on 1 January 2024, for the states ranked next to Sweden. Only states that publish both figures that year are ranked.

Foreign-citizen share, Sweden and the states ranked next to it, 1 January 2024
Rank	Country	Foreign citizens and stateless people, share of residents
16	Czechia	8.7%^*
17	Netherlands	8.5%^*
18	Sweden	7.9%^*
19	Greece	7.1%^*
20	Finland	6.6%^*
—	European Union (27, from 2020) (reference, not ranked)	9.6%^*

Largest foreign citizenships

Residents of Sweden by individual citizenship on 1 January 2025, the ten largest of the 197 citizenships Eurostat publishes. This is the citizenship people hold, not where they were born and not their ethnicity.

Ten largest foreign citizenships among residents of Sweden, 1 January 2025
Rank	Citizenship	People	Share of residents
1	Poland	54,617	0.52%^*
2	Afghanistan	39,546	0.37%^*
3	Syria	38,209	0.36%^*
4	India	37,823	0.36%^*
5	Finland	35,472	0.34%^*
6	Ukraine	35,465	0.33%^*
7	Germany	33,776	0.32%^*
8	Norway	27,013	0.26%^*
9	Denmark	24,907	0.24%^*
10	China	24,025	0.23%^*

Country of birth

Residents of Sweden by where they were born, on 1 January 2025. This is a different question from citizenship: someone born abroad may hold Sweden's citizenship, and someone born in Sweden may not.

Residents of Sweden by country of birth, 1 January 2025
Country of birth	People	Share of residents
All residents	10,587,710	—
Born in Sweden	8,387,472	79.2%^*
Born in another country	2,199,046	20.8%^*
Born in another EU country	552,988	5.2%^*
Born outside the EU	1,646,058	15.5%^*
Country of birth not stated	1,192	0.01%^*

Arrivals and departures

People who moved to or left Sweden during each calendar year, as reported to Eurostat. Arrivals and departures are separate published figures; the difference is the site's subtraction of the two for the same year.

Arrivals, departures and their difference, Sweden, 2024 and earlier years
Year	Arrived	Left	Arrived minus left
2024	116,197	86,449	29,748^*
2023	94,514	73,434	21,080^*
2022	102,436	50,592	51,844^*
2021	90,631	48,284	42,347^*
2020	82,518	48,937	33,581^*
2019	115,805	47,718	68,087^*

By citizenship, 2024

Arrivals and departures by the citizenship of the person moving. Each line is a separate published figure; none is added to another.

Arrivals and departures by citizenship, Sweden, 2024
Citizenship	Arrived	Left
Citizens of Sweden	18,916	39,550
Citizens of other EU countries	24,706	16,720
Citizens of countries outside the EU	72,212	29,605
Stateless people	292	243
Citizenship not stated	71	331

How to read these figures

Citizenship is the legal bond between a person and a state. Country of birth is where a person was born. They are different facts and different tables, and neither records ethnicity, origin or descent.
Residents counted at 1 January are a stock; arrivals and departures are events during a calendar year. A flow is never a change in a stock, and the two are not divided by each other here.
Eurostat takes each country’s own statistics. Countries differ in who counts as an arrival or a resident, so comparisons between countries are approximate.

Cyprus, covered in full

Cyprus is the one country this site covers in full, down to its districts. Its immigration page is the deepest example of what a country page can hold.

Keep reading

Modification notice and disclaimer

The counts on this page are published by Eurostat (Statistical Office of the European Union) and are reproduced unchanged. Humanity Observatory has additionally derived the following from them:

A share of residents, computed by dividing one published count by another from the same table, country and date (for example foreign citizens by all residents).
A country's rank among the EU states for its foreign-citizen share, computed by sorting the published figures of the states that publish both counts for the year.
The difference between published immigration and published emigration for the same country and year (arrivals minus departures). It is a subtraction of two published figures, not a net-migration figure published by Eurostat.
The ten largest individual citizenships, selected by sorting the published figures for the latest year in which most countries are published.

Source: Eurostat. Reuse terms.

^* Calculated by Humanity Observatory from published figures.

Where these numbers come from → Compare the foreign-citizen share across countries →