A baby born in Sweden in 2026: personnummer, permit, passport

A midwife reports the birth before you leave the hospital, and a few weeks later a letter from Skatteverket arrives with your child’s personnummer. Nothing in that letter mentions immigration. If neither parent is a Swedish or EU citizen, the child’s residence permit is a separate application that you start, and it cannot be decided until the child has a passport from your own embassy.

The birth registers itself. The permit does not.

In most cases a midwife at the hospital reports the birth to Skatteverket. If the person who gave birth is folkbokförd in Sweden, the child is registered and receives a personnummer at the same time. A home birth without a midwife is the exception: then the parents report it themselves within a month.

Two deadlines follow, and both belong to you. Skatteverket needs the child’s first name and surname within three months of the birth. If the parents are not married, the other parent confirms parenthood (föräldraskapsbekräftelse) digitally within 14 days of the birth; after those 14 days it goes through the municipality’s socialnämnd instead.

None of this gives the child the right to stay. Folkbokföring and immigration status are two registers held by two authorities, and Skatteverket does not open a case at Migrationsverket on your behalf.

The child’s permit: two years, never past the passport

If one parent is a Swedish citizen when the child is born, the child is a Swedish citizen too, wherever the birth took place. There is nothing to apply for. If both parents are citizens of a country outside the EU and the EEA, the child needs a residence permit, and it is the parent who already holds a permit in Sweden who fills in the application.

The permit is granted for at most two years and never for longer than the child’s passport is valid. It can be extended. A child of a parent with a permanent residence permit can be granted permanent residence after three years of residence.

Which e-service you use depends on your own permit. A parent with a work permit applies through the service for family members of an employee, a parent with a study permit through the service for family members of a student, and everyone else through the e-service for children born in Sweden.

You may send the application before the passport exists, but the case cannot be decided without it. Migrationsverket will write and ask you to book an appointment to present the passport. Bring the child to that visit, so the photograph for the residence permit card is taken then rather than at a second appointment.

The passport comes from your embassy, not from Sweden

Sweden does not issue a passport to a child who is not a Swedish citizen. The child’s national passport comes from the embassy or consulate of the parents’ country, and the waiting time there is the part of this you control least.

Start it in the first weeks. Some embassies want the Swedish personbevis from Skatteverket, some want the name registered first, and some want both parents to appear in person.

If the child cannot obtain a national passport at all, you can apply to Migrationsverket for an alien’s passport (främlingspass). Documents you attach must be in Swedish or English; a translation has to be certified and the document in the original language attached as well.

Money, and a worked example

Barnbidrag is 1 250 kr a month per child, paid from the month after the birth to guardians who, together with the child, are insured in Sweden. In the standard case there is no application. Flerbarnstillägg is added on top: 150 kr for two children, 730 kr for three, 1 740 kr for four and 2 990 kr for five.

Föräldrapenning is 480 days per child, 390 of them at sjukpenningnivå and 90 at lägstanivå. Ninety of the income-based days are reserved for each parent and cannot be transferred. Lägstanivå is 180 kr a day; the income-based level runs from 250 kr to 1 259 kr a day.

To be paid above 250 kr a day during the child’s first 180 days, you need an SGI corresponding to a salary of at least 7 083 kr a month for at least 240 days before the expected date of birth. Apply within 90 days of your first day of leave. Both you and the child must be insured in Sweden, and the child must live in Sweden, the EU, the EEA or Switzerland.

Nadia and Karim hold permanent residence permits and are not married. Their daughter Lina is born in Solna on 4 March 2026, the midwife reports the birth, and Skatteverket registers Lina with a personnummer a few weeks later. Karim confirms parenthood digitally on 12 March, inside the 14 days, and the name has to reach Skatteverket by 4 June 2026.

They file Lina’s residence permit application on 20 March and pay 1 000 kr, and the first barnbidrag of 1 250 kr arrives in April 2026, the month after the birth. The embassy issues her passport on 2 June 2026, valid to 2 June 2031, so the two-year ceiling is what binds and the permit is granted for two years. After three years of residence Lina can be granted a permanent residence permit of her own.

If you hold a temporary permit

The steps above are the same, but the ceiling over your family moves. A child’s permit is never longer than the parent’s, so where your own permit is temporary the child’s follows that shorter period rather than a full two years.

From 1 October 2026 the family immigration rules tighten. A two-year wait applies to anchor persons who hold temporary permits, with labour migrants, researchers, doctoral students and certain refugees exempt, and the maintenance requirement is checked at extension as well. A child born here is not the same case as a family member applying from abroad, but the extension of your own permit is what carries the child’s.

The practical consequence is order. Renew your passport, then your permit, then the child’s — a chain in which each link is capped by the one above it.

What we do not know yet

Two things. How Migrationsverket will apply the stricter good-conduct requirement to an ordinary family case: no settled practice was published when this article was checked on 31 August 2026. And how long a child-born-in-Sweden application takes right now. The agency shows a rolling figure for 75 per cent of recently decided cases on the application page itself, and that is the number to read on the day you file.

The Försäkringskassan amounts above are set per year and move with the budget. Before you plan around them, check the current figure at forsakringskassan.se.