Moving to Sweden — complete guides for newcomers

Moving to Sweden or just arrived? SverigeStart explains Swedish bureaucracy, work, taxes, housing, healthcare and daily life in plain language — with an AI assistant that explains important documents and gives clear, source-based answers.

• Immigration & ID
  If you're a citizen of an EU or EEA country (or Switzerland)…
• Taxes
  Before Skatteverket (the Swedish Tax Agency) can tax your income correctly — or at all — it needs to know who you are.…
• Work & your rights
  When you accept a job in Sweden, what you're actually entitled to isn't just whatever your employer happens to tell you…
• Renting a home
  Rental scams are extremely common in Sweden's tight housing markets precisely because demand is so high (see below)…
• Find housing & jobs
  Once you understand the three-layer housing market from the Housing guide…
• Healthcare
  Two phone numbers matter more than anything else in this whole guide…
• Family & children
  Almost all young children in Sweden attend a form of public childcare called förskola long before formal school starts…
• Getting around
  Sweden doesn't have one national public transport app — each region runs its own separate system with its own app…
• Driving
  Whether you can keep driving on the licence you already have depends entirely on where that licence is from…
• Money & banking
  Two things you need almost immediately after arriving are a Swedish bank account and something called BankID…
• Everyday life
  Sweden controls alcohol sales through a state monopoly, which is unusual compared to most countries…
• Nature & leisure
  Sweden has an unusual, constitutionally protected legal right that lets ordinary people walk…
• Culture & unwritten rules
  Sweden has plenty of social rules that nobody will ever explicitly explain to you, but everyone quietly expects you to follow…
• Weather & seasons
  Sweden is much longer, north to south, than most people realise — meaning "Swedish weather" isn't really one thing at all.…
• Studying
  Whether university in Sweden costs you anything at all depends entirely on your citizenship — EU/EEA/Swiss citizens pay nothing…
• Laws to know
  Most laws are common sense wherever you're from, but a handful of Swedish rules are stricter, or simply different…
• Know Sweden
  A quick orientation before the practical guides — who Sweden actually is as a country…
• Translators & legal help
  Some official processes in Sweden won't accept a document you translated yourself…

SverigeStart brings information from many official Swedish sources together in one place, and we work to keep it up to date. Even so, rules, rates and amounts can change at any time, and we cannot guarantee that a page here always matches the authority's latest wording. Always confirm with the responsible authority before you act. We give general information, not professional advice on legal, tax, immigration or medical matters, and we take no responsibility for differences between this page and the official source, or for decisions taken on the basis of it.