This past June was the month when strict new citizenship requirements began applying to all applications in the queue, as well as to new applications.

When the Swedish Migration Agency (Migrationsverket) published its monthly statistics for June, we found that the number of people awarded Swedish citizenship fell by more than half in June 2026, compared to the previous month.

But about compared to the same time last year? Since monthly data for rejected applications wasn't published online, The Local reached out to Migrationsverket to get it.

What we found was a big jump in rejections from June 2025.

The detailed data (which is sliced slightly differently than the basic data published online) shows a total of 4,339 citizenship cases decided in June 2026. Of those, only 1,403 were granted citizenship – just 32 percent.

The other 68 percent? Rejected.

This is in comparison to the same time last year: in June 2025, 56 percent of decided Swedish citizenship cases were approved, while 44 percent were rejected.

This is a 54.55 percent increase in rejected cases between June 2025 and June 2026.

While we don't know the reasons behind this jump, it seems safe to assume that it has something to do with the strict new Swedish citizenship rules which came into force on June 6th 2026.

The changed law includes longer residency requirements, passing tests in Swedish civics and the Swedish language, and expanded income requirements – among other elements.

Because the law was passed without transitional rules for the hundred thousand people in the case backlog, anyone with an application remaining in the queue after June 6th 2026 risked rejection on the basis of rules that didn't exist when they applied.