Finland’s Immigration Service (Migri) confirmed on 9 October 2026 that a new citizenship test will become a statutory prerequisite for naturalisation applications filed on or after 1 March 2027. The move is the final stage of a multi-year tightening of Finland’s Nationality Act that has already lengthened required residence periods and imposed stricter livelihood criteria. Under the new rules, applicants aged 18–64 will have to demonstrate knowledge of Finland’s society, legal system, history and civic values by either passing the standardised multiple-choice test or presenting a Finnish- or Swedish-language secondary-school or higher-education diploma. In practical terms, the change means that employers, universities and relocation providers will need to coach long-term foreign residents on the new requirement well before they reach eligibility for citizenship. Migri has commissioned the University of Helsinki to develop free self-study materials and sample questions, which will be published online by year-end 2026. Test sessions will start in spring 2027 in seven regional hubs, including Helsinki, Tampere and Oulu, with schedules released at the turn of the year. Similar civic-knowledge exams already exist in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and Migri argues that harmonisation will make the Finnish process more transparent. However, the agency also acknowledges a backlog of roughly 46,600 pending citizenship applications since 2023 and warns that the additional administrative layer could initially lengthen processing times unless staffing is increased. For businesses, the key takeaway is timing: employees who qualify for citizenship under current rules but may struggle with a formal examination have less than five months to file before the test becomes mandatory. Relocation advisers should therefore audit expatriate populations immediately and, where appropriate, accelerate applications. Longer term, the freely available study kit offers an opportunity for employers to run in-house preparation courses that dovetail with diversity and inclusion programmes.
