Naturalisations

Resident

Who is regarded as a resident of Norway and where in Norway a person shall be regarded as a resident, are laid down in Law on Population Registration from 16 January 1970. The regulations of the law have been amended several times, most recently with effect from 1 February 1998. For details about the term resident, read here under the point "Definitions".

Acquisition of Norwegian citizenship

Pursuant to the Act on Norwegian nationality of 1 September 2006, it is possible to become a Norwegian citizen automatically, by notification or upon application. The main rule on acquisition upon application is that any person has a right to a Norwegian citizenship if the applicant at the time the administrative decision is made fulfills the following criteria and that the application is not in conflict with the interests of national security or foreign policy:

• has clarified their identity
• has reached the age of 12
• is and will remain a resident of the kingdom
• meets the conditions for permanent residence permit as specified in the Immigration Act § 62
• has a total of 8 years of residence in the kingdom during the last 11 years, with residence permits of at least one year's duration, including periods of application within the eight-year period
• meets the requirements for proficiency in spoken Norwegian and has passed the citizenship test, and
• has not been convicted or subjected to special criminal sanctions, or has not undergone a waiting period

For certain groups of applicants, there are more favorable acquisition conditions. This applies to:

• applicants with sufficient income in the past year. The requirement for these applicants is 6 years of residence in the kingdom.
• persons who arrived in the realm before reaching the age of 18 must have spent a total of five years in the kingdom.
• persons who are married to Norwegian citizens and have a joint residence with their spouse. For these, the requirement is that the time in the kingdom and the time married to a Norwegian citizen together constitute at least 7 years. The period of residence and the time married to a Norwegian citizen can be earned simultaneously. However, the applicant must have at least 5 years of residence in the kingdom. The rules apply correspondingly to registered partners and cohabitants.
• Nordic citizens who can obtain Norwegian citizenship after only 2 years of continuous residence.
• those who have previously been Norwegian citizens. For these as well, the residence requirement is 2 years of continuous residence.
• stateless applicants who have resided in the kingdom for the past 3 years.
• those who have been granted a residence permit as a refugee under the Immigration Act § 28, the residence requirement is 7 years.
• children of parents who are acquiring or has acquired Norwegian citizenship, and who have resided in the kingdom for 2 years continuously.

A child becomes a Norwegian national at birth if his or her father or mother is a Norwegian national. If the father dies before the child is born, it is sufficient that the father was a Norwegian national when he died.

A child who is adopted by a Norwegian national becomes a Norwegian citizen by adoption if:

• the child is under the age of 18 at the time of the adoption. The adoption order must be issued by Norwegian authorities pursuant to the Adoption Act.
• through a foreign adoption that is valid in Norway.

Age

A person’s age at the time of the naturalisation.

Marital status

After the Act on Registered Partnerships from 1 August 1993 the following marital status were effective 1 January 1994: Unmarried (not previously married), married, widow/widower, divorced, separated, registered partner, separated partner, divorced partner and surviving partner. Before 1994 only the first five codes applied.

Follows the Standard for Countries and Citizenship in Population Statistics.

Name: Naturalisations
Topic: Population

Division for Population Statistics

The nation, counties, municipalities.

Annual

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Collected and revised data are stored securely by Statistics Norway in compliance with applicable legislation on data processing.

Statistics Norway can grant access to the source data (de-identified or anonymised microdata) on which the statistics are based, for researchers and public authorities for the purposes of preparing statistical results and analyses. Access can be granted upon application and subject to conditions. Refer to the details about this at Access to data from Statistics Norway.

This statistic shall, together with other subjects of population statistics, help to show the changes taking place which affects the composition of the population.

Statistics on naturalisations have been published every year since 1977.

The statistics have a broad range of users and applications such as research institutes within demography and living conditions, public administration, press, broadcasting, and private persons.

No external users have access to statistics before they are released at 8 a.m. on ssb.no after at least three months’ advance notice in the Statistics Release Calendar. This is one of the most important principles in Statistics Norway for ensuring the equal treatment of users.

This statistics is related to Migration Statistics, particularly the migration to Norway of foreign citizens 7-8 years ago. The residency requirement for applying for Norwegian citizenship was 7 years until 2022. From January 1, 2022, the residency requirement is 8 years, with certain exceptions for some groups.

In Population Statistics, the number of Norwegian and foreign nationals can be seen in connection with allocations of Norwegian citizenship in the preceding years.

Discrepancies between SSB and UDI

The Directorate of Immigration (UDI) also compiles statistics on granted citizenships. They obtain their figures from their Immigration Database. The discrepancy is largely due to the fact that SSB's statistics include delayed notifications of transition to Norwegian citizenship that were not received by the Population Register in time to be included in the statistics for the calendar year in which the event occurred. In UDI's statistics, however, such delays are not included.

Additionally, some discrepancies have been uncovered in the classification of individuals with previous citizenships from the new states in the Balkans as well as stateless persons.Directorate of Immigration (UDI) has also compiled statistics on granted citizenship for 2020. They published figures in January and have registered 19,469 naturalisations. The difference is for the most due to that Statistics Norway includes delayed messages about the transition to Norwegian citizenship that has not been received by the population register in time to be included in the statistics for the calendar year the event took place.

The statistics are developed, compiled, and disseminated pursuant to the Act of 21 June 2019 No. 32 on official statistics and the Statistics Norway (the Statistics Act, lovdata.no).

The statistics are part of the national program for official statistics, main area Population, sub-area Immigrants.

Regulation (EU) No 1260/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 November 2013 on European demographic statistics.

The statistical material comprises granted Norwegian citizenship to people who are registered as resident in Norway. Delayed messages in the Population Register have been treated in different ways over time in the statistics. A delayed notification of a naturalisation is one that is not made in time to be included in the statistics for the calendar year the event took place. The treatment of these lags affects whether and how the events are included in the statistics for the specified period.

The statistics for the years from 2002 includes mainly naturalisations that were actually registered annually. Registered transitions from previous years are counted in the statistics for year n if the message came in the period February 1, year n until 31 January year n + 1. This implies a permitted delay of one month.

The statistics for the years 1999 to 2001 has the same scope, except that the registration of incidents from previous years had a permissible delay of two months, allowing registered transitions from previous years to be counted in the statistics for year n if they were made in the period from March 1 year n even 29 February year n + 1.

The statistics for the years 1985-1998 included naturalisations which were registered in that year and also those from the previous year which was registered too late to be included in the survey that year.

Population Statistics includes all residents in Norway. The main rule to be regarded as a resident is that the stay is at least six months' duration even if it is temporary. Likewise shall permanently settlers in Norway with a stay abroad for more than six months not be regarded as residents in Norway. For people from other Nordic countries staying temporarily in Norway and Norwegians staying temporarily in other Nordic countries, this rule is waived. Details about the term residents can be found under the point "Definitions".

The statistics are based on the Population Register.

The Population Register receives information from copies of citizen letters which the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) issues. In addition, a person can be granted Norwegian citizenship in the Population Register when a paternity notification or corrections of parenting information makes it clear that they have at least one parent with Norwegian citizenship. The statistics are calculated by counting the number of naturalisations, excluded those caused by delayed paternity notifications.

In addition to controls done in the Population Register, Statistics Norway perform controls for statistical purposes.

Editing is defined here as checking, examining and amending data. Various control programs are run in the database, such as the use of invalid municipality numbers, ensuring that previous citizenship is not Norwegian, and that the date of transition to Norwegian citizenship is not the same as the birth date.

Interviewers and everyone who works at Statistics Norway have a duty of confidentiality. Statistics Norway has its own data protection officer.

Statistics Norway does not publish figures where there is a risk of identifying individual data about persons.

The rounding up/down method is used in these statistics to ensure this.

More information can be found on Statistics Norway’s website under Methods in official statistics, in the ‘Confidentiality’ section.

Comparability back to 1977 is good although the scope of the statistics vary somewhat over time. Read more below the point "Production", subpoint "Population". When comparing on a regional level over time one must be aware that municipalities have merged and borders have been regulated in this period. This also applies to changes of citizenship and codes for immigration and emigration countries.

Some errors made during the collecting and processing of the data are unavoidable and include coding, revision and data processing errors etc. Extensive efforts have been made to minimize these errors, and we regard these types of errors to be relatively insignificant.

The quality of the data from the Population Register is generally very good for statistical purposes. Two objections are missing and delayed messages and registration of residence. Delayed nottic when one adds up numbers for several years.

A revision is a planned ifications cause naturalisations to be registered in the wrong calendar. This becomes less problemachange to figures that have already been published, for example when releasing final figures as a follow-up to published preliminary figures. See also Statistics Norway’s principles for revisions.