Working holiday visa for young people
Route status
Active as of 2025-02-19[2]
Open to new applications under the rules recorded below.
| Open only to nationals of | Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea as of 2025-02-19[2] 'You must be a citizen of Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand or South Korea.' A genuine allowlist – the route exists only through bilateral youth-exchange agreements and is closed to everyone else. This is the v1.1 eligible_nationalities case. Hong Kong is listed as Migrationsverket lists it; it is a special administrative region rather than a state, which the field's free-text values can hold but a strict country-code consumer could not. |
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Residency route facts
Identity
| Official name (local) | Feriearbete för unga personer as of 2025-02-25[1] Page name on Migrationsverket's Swedish site. |
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| Official name (English) | Working holiday visa for young people as of 2025-02-19[2] Page name on Migrationsverket's English site. 'Visa' in the English page name is loose – the instrument is a residence permit. |
| Legal basis | Utlanningslag (2005:716) 5 kap. 10 § och 6 kap. 2 § tredje stycket (Lag 2026:295) as of 2026-08-22[2][3] |
| Instrument type | residence permit as of 2025-02-19[2] Migrationsverket describes the outcome as a residence permit throughout, despite the page name saying 'visa'. |
Who can apply
| Nationals not served by this route | EU, EEA as of 2025-02-19[2] None of the six agreement partners is an EU/EEA state; the exclusion is implicit in the allowlist. |
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| Minimum age | 18 as of 2025-02-19[2] 'You must be between 18 and 30 years of age.' The upper bound of 30 has no field. |
| Criminal-record condition | Not established from a qualifying source |
Permit terms
| Initial duration | up to 1 year as of 2025-02-19[2] 'You can be granted a residence permit for a maximum of one year.' |
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| Renewable | No as of 2025-02-19[2] 'A residence permit for a working holiday cannot be extended.' |
| Maximum total duration | up to 1 year as of 2025-02-19[2] |
| Work rights | full as of 2025-02-19[2] 'When you are in Sweden, you are allowed to work, but the work must not be the main purpose of your trip to Sweden and must end when your permit expires.' Unrestricted as to employer or occupation, hence 'full'; the purpose condition is a limit on the stay, not on the kind of work. |
Permanent residence and citizenship
| Counts toward permanent residence | No as of 2026-08-22[3] Not among the permit types Utlanningslag 5 kap. 5 § counts, and non-renewable at one year. |
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Requirements
| Job offer required | No as of 2025-02-19[2] No job offer and no employer. The permit is granted on citizenship, age, funds, a return ticket and insurance; work is permitted afterwards but is not the ground. |
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| Labour-market test | No as of 2025-02-19[2] |
| Own means requirement | SEK 15,000 as of 2025-02-19[2] 'You must have at least SEK 15,000, so that you can support yourself financially when you first arrive in Sweden' – a one-off arrival balance, not a monthly income, which is why no 'per' is set. A return ticket or the money to buy one is required on top. Comprehensive health insurance is required except for Australian citizens, whose bilateral agreement covers it. |
| Job-search route | No as of 2025-02-19[2] Not a job-search route in the G9 sense: work is permitted but incidental, and there is no requirement to be looking for it. |
Process
| Where to apply from | from abroad only as of 2025-02-19[2] 'If you are applying for a residence permit for the first time, you must do so from outside Sweden.' |
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| Observed processing time | Recorded at the source, but not reducible to a single value[2] |
| Fees |
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| Quota |
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Physical presence
| none stated | to keep the permit as of 2025-02-19[2] None stated. |
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Family inclusion
| Family members may be included | Not established from a qualifying source[2] Not mentioned on the page. The route is built for a single young person and the agreements are individual, but no statement that family may not accompany was located – recorded unknown rather than false. |
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Your next step
Read the requirements above considering your own situation: the income multiple, the absence limits, who you can bring. Check the country record for the reference figure those amounts are calculated from, and for anything that has changed recently.
The next step is your own case. That assessment is legal work. Create profile for our assistance in this.
Profile benefits
- A 30-minute call with our consultant, who reads your profile first.
- An offer for legal support built around your case, covering the whole process.
Verification
| Sources cited | 3 |
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| of which official (tier 1) | 3 |
| Oldest as-of date | 2025-02-19 |
| Newest as-of date | 2026-08-22 |
| Reviewed on | 2026-08-22 |
| Schema version | 1.1 |
Sources
- [1] Tillfalligt arbete i Sverige (Swedish-language temporary-work hub)
Swedish Migration Agency (Migrationsverket) · official portal · Tier 1 · Published 2025-02-25 · Accessed 2026-08-22 - [2] Working holiday visa for young people
Swedish Migration Agency (Migrationsverket) · official portal · Tier 1 · Published 2025-02-19 · Accessed 2026-08-22 - [3] Utlanningslag (2005:716), consolidated text, amended up to and including SFS 2026:1451
Sveriges riksdag / Regeringskansliet · statute · Tier 1 · Accessed 2026-08-22