Over the age of 18
If you have registered as an EU/EEA national with the police in Norway and you live here on a permanent basis, you can apply for Norwegian citizenship. You must meet the requirements for registration both when you apply for Norwegian citizenship and while your application is being processed.
Requirements for Norwegian citizenship
- You must pay an application fee.
- You must have your identity verified. As a general rule, you are required to present a passport.
- You must be residing in Norway and intend to continue living here in the future.
- You must reside in Norway both when you apply for Norwegian citizenship and when the application is processed.
- If you are between 18 and 67 years old, you must:
- If you over the age of 15 years: You must order a criminal record certificate (external website), which you must hand in with the application. The certificate cannot be more than three months old when you meet for your appointment with the police to submit the application documents. Therefore, you must wait to apply for a criminal record certificate until you know when you have an appointment with the police. If you already have a criminal record certificate that is older than three months, you must apply for a new certificate before you have your appointment. If you have been convicted or fined by the police or if you are under investigation for a criminal offence, you might have to wait longer to become a Norwegian citizen.
- From 1 January 2020, you are not required to give up your original citizenship to become a Norwegian citizen. You can have one or more citizenships in addition to a Norwegian citizenship. However, if the country you are a citizen of now does not allow you to have more than one citizenship, you may still lose this citizenship when you become a Norwegian citizen.
- You must make sure what the rules are in your current country of citizenship. You can, for example, look for information on an official website which belongs to the authorities in that country or ask an embassy.
- You do not have to inform Norwegian authorities that you wish to keep your previous citizenship.
- You must have stayed in Norway for a total of eight of the past eleven years with a right of residence or permits with a minimum length of one year. Right of residence means that you must have worked, studied or been granted family reunification with an EEA citizen with a right of residence in Norway.
- There are shorter residency requirements for some groups. If you have sufficient income, you must have resided in Norway with a right of residence for a total of six years of the past ten years with a right of residence or permits with a minimum length of one year.
- If you were born in Norway or came here before you reached the age of 18, there is also a shorter residence period requirement. In that case, you must have resided in Norway with a right of residence for a total of five years of the past seven years with either a right of residence or with permits with a minimum length of one year.
- A few other groups also have their own requirements for residency time. Read more about the exemptions for «researchers associated with a Norwegian research institution», «athletes», «household members of deployed personnel at a Norwegian foreign service mission or of military personnel», «foreigners who have held a Norwegian passport», and «Kola Norwegians» here.
- Read more about how to calculate the length of your residence period.
- You are required to either have a permanent right of residence or having stayed in Norway with a right of residence for the past three years. If you do not have a permanent right of residence, your stay for the last three years must have been continuous. This means that you cannot have traveled more than two months abroad per calendar year during the last three years.
- You have a permanent right of residence if you have received a permanent residence card or a permanent residence certificate. You may also have a permanent right of residence even if you have not applied for a residence card.
- If you are wondering whether you have a permanent right of residence, you can find information about your residence if you log in using ID-porten on «My page».