If you are planning to get married in Norway, you can apply for a residence permit to enter into marriage (fiancé permit).
The content of the permit
The purpose of this permit is to enable you to get married in Norway. The permit is valid for six months. You must live with your fiancé in Norway during this period. If you do not get married in the course of six months, you must leave Norway.
After you have married, you must apply for family immigration with your spouse to be able to stay in Norway. You must apply for family immigration prior to the expiry of your fiancé permit, and you can stay in Norway while your application is being processed.
You are not entitled to free Norwegian tuition while you are in Norway on a fiancé permit. You can read more about your entitlements and obligations on the webpages of the Directorate of Integration and Diversity (IMDi)
You can travel into and out of Norway for as long as the fiancé permit is valid, and you can also work here. Read more about family immigration permits at www.udi.no/family.
Who can apply?
You can apply for a fiancé permit if the person you are going to marry is a Norwegian citizen or lives in Norway and holds a permanent residence permit (settlement permit) or a residence permit that forms the basis for a permanent residence permit.
If you are going to marry a person who resides in Norway with a residence permit pursuant to the EU/EEA/EFTA Regulations, you cannot apply for a fiancé permit. However, if you are an EEA national yourself, you can stay in Norway without a permit for up to three months or up to six months if you are seeking employment. You can get married in the course of such a stay in Norway.
How to apply
To apply, you need to fill in the application form for work and residence. The application must, as a rule, be submitted to the Norwegian embassy or consulate in your home country or the country in which you have held a residence permit for the past six months. The embassy or consulate will forward the application to the Directorate of Immigration (UDI), which will process your case. You cannot enter Norway until your application has been processed.
The purpose of this permit is to enable you to get married in Norway. Before you get married , the National Population Registry (Directorate of Taxes) will verify that the conditions for marriage according to the Norwegian Marriage Act have been fulfilled. As a foreigner who intends entering into marriage in Norway, The Population Registry will require that you submit documentation from your country of origin (Certificate of no Impediment), which shows that you are not married. It is a condition to be granted a fiancé permit that you can submit documentation from your country of origin which will be approved by the National Population Registry. If you are not able to submit such a document, you can risk a rejection of your application for a fiancé permit. Your fiancé or you can contact the National Population Registry to find out what the requirements are for your country of origin in order to get married in Norway. You can also read about the documentation required in order to to enter into marriage in Norway at the National Population Registry's websites.
What must be enclosed with the application?
The documentation you must enclose depends on the permit you apply for. See the list of documentation you must enclose to a family immigration application.
Depending on which country you apply from, the list of enclosed documentation may vary over time. You should therefore check with the embassy or the consulate in the country you apply from as to which documentation you must enclose.
NOTE! The requirement concerning what documentation you must enclose can vary from country to country and may change over time. The Norwegian embassies and consulates have both application forms and an overview of what documentation you must enclose with your application. Most Norwegian embassies abroad have their own websites and some of these provide information about documentation requirements.
You must also pay a fee, which is the same as the fee for first-time family immigration applications.
Case processing time
See the list of the Directorate of Immigration’s (UDI) expected case processing times at www.udi.no/caseprocessingtime. To ensure that the case processing time is as short as possible, it is important that you fill in the application form carefully and that you enclose all the required documentation.
You can appeal the decision
Read more about how to appeal a decision at www.udi.no/appeals.
Further information
If you have more questions about this topic, contact your nearest Norwegian embassy or consulate, the nearest police district or the UDI’s Information Service.
