Quick facts
Party name in Swedish: Miljöpartiet (literally "The Environment Party"). The (rarely used) full official name is Miljöpartiet de gröna (lit. The Environment Party, the Greens).
Leader: None. The Green Party has an egalitarian structure, with two main "spokespeople" (always one man and one woman) instead of a single leader. The current "spokespeople" are Amanda Lind and Daniel Helldén.
Current number of seats in parliament: 18
Vote share in the last election (2022): 5.08 percent
Part of the current governing coalition?: No
Current ministerial posts: None
2026 election slogan: Sverige vinner på grön politik ("With green policy, Sweden wins")
Party background
The Green Party, formed in 1981, emerged from Sweden's strong anti-nuclear movement. It was, and still is, Sweden's only party with environment and climate policy as its primary priority. In the 1988 election, the Greens received 5.5 percent of the vote, taking it over the 4 percent threshold and into the riksdag (parliament) – the first new party to do so in seventy years.
In the 1991 election they dropped below the 4 percent threshold and had no seats in parliament until the next election in 1994, when they received 5.02 percent of the vote. They have retained seats in parliament in every election since, and held governing roles for the first time from 2014 to 2021, in a government led by the Social Democrats. The Greens left that government before the 2022 election when the government's 2022 budget failed to pass in parliament and the right-wing opposition parties successfully passed their budget instead.
During the last four years of right-wing governance by the Tidö coalition (led by the Moderates, with the Christian Democrats and Liberals also in government and the far-right Sweden Democrats as a supporting partner), the Greens have been a vocal opposition party, sharply criticising the governing coalition, particularly on environment and energy policy, as well as on immigration law.
Ideologically the Green Party is feminist, with a stated belief that "a society where all people have the same rights, opportunities and freedom to shape their lives" and "where no one is discriminated against because of gender, background, disability, religion, sexual orientation or where you live" must go hand-in-hand with environmentally sustainable policy.
Key priorities in the 2026 election
Moving towards their ongoing overarching goal of "making Sweden the world’s first fossil-free welfare state."
What are their positions on key issues?
Immigration
Green Party parliamentary leader and party migration spokesperson Annika Hirvonen has been a leading voice opposing the Tidö coalition's numerous immigration reforms. The party, and Hirvonen in particular, led the parliamentary fight to add transitional rules to Swedish citizenship – a fight they narrowly lost.
This vocal opposition to tough immigration laws is in line with the party's position on migration issues. In their election platform, the party says it stands for "humane and legally secure migration policy," believes that the right to seek asylum from danger or oppression is a fundamental human right, and strongly opposes forcing people to return to danger or oppression.
The Greens also hold the position that wealthy nations have a historical responsibility to assist and protect people forced to leave their homes due to climate change, and that undocumented immigrants have a right to be respected and protected.
They support open labour migration, believe that foreign workers should have the same rights as others in Sweden, that foreign workers make Sweden stronger, and that employers who exploit foreign labour must be held to account.
The party also explicitly addresses xenophobia, polarisation, and anti-immigrant rhetoric in Sweden, saying in its platform that "[t]today we see how immigrants as a collective are increasingly blamed for social problems and made scapegoats.This creates insecurity and division." They go on to say that their party works to combat said insecurity and division.
Specific policy proposals include permanent residence permits as "the standard rule, to prevent people from living in constant uncertainty" and expanding the right to family reunification, particularly to help women and children.
The economy (including cost-of-living and taxes)
The Green Party views the economy as a tool for the well-being of people and the planet, not an end in itself. Their platform states that they want to move from a "throwaway economy" to a circular economy, which is one where resources are shared, rented, repaired, reused, and recycled. They argue that traditional GDP is an insufficient measure of welfare and that other metrics—which track emissions, health, and resource distribution—should shape economic policy.
The party supports state subsidies for building affordable housing, state support for climate-smart renovations so that costs are not passed on to renters, and state financial support for low-income families.
On taxes, the Greens want to introduce progressive capital and income taxes which require the wealthiest to contribute more to support welfare, finance a green transition, and reduce wealth inequality. They think that work income and social security income should be equally taxed, and propose reforming the tax system to prevent wealth concentration among a few private actors in cases where AI and robotics displace human labour.
They propose that revenues from environmental taxes on high emissions be redirected to households which struggle to make ends meet as fossil fuel prices rise.
The Greens want to see public finances used to make massive investments in green infrastructure (such as railways and the electricity grid). They argue that these major investments, which benefit future generations, should be financed through state borrowing.
Healthcare
The Greens want to abolish for-profit healthcare, and oppose market logic in the welfare system overall, believing that profit interests do not belong in healthcare. They also support fully state-funded dental care.
Their election platform states the party's stance that healthcare should focus on promoting overall health and preventing illness, rather than just treating diseases, and that primary care should play a central role in preventative care.
Specific positions include: improved conditions for healthcare workers (e.g. competitive salaries, an improved work environment, and more influence over their work); science-based addiction care under the jurisdiction of the regions; prioritising mental health alongside physical health; and investing in research and international collaboration to increase resilience in the healthcare system to pandemics, antibiotic resistance, climate crises, and security threats.
Climate
The party's objective is for Sweden to achieve negative climate emissions by binding more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than the country emits. They advocate for legally binding climate targets that strictly align with scientific consensus and the Paris Agreement's target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.
They want to phase out the use of fossil fuels via a ban on new investments in fossil fuel extraction, no new permits for peat mining (torvbrytning), and a ban on uranium mining. They also oppose new nuclear power and support eventual phase-out of existing nuclear plants as renewable energy capacity expands.
They want stable, long-term regulatory frameworks to allow the private sector to successfully execute massive green investments, and robust state investments in education and lifelong learning so workers can transition into the newly emerging "green jobs". In their platform, they point out that Sweden is warming at twice the global average rate and push for climate adaptation to be integrated directly into urban and societal planning via building safeguards against floods and heatwaves, and incorporating green spaces in cities to mitigate extreme temperatures.
Since climate issues are the core of the party's mission, the Greens have many other positions and detailed policy proposals in this area – climate policy informs a large portion of their policy platform. Specific climate policies can be found particularly in sections 3 ("A Just Climate Transition") and 4 ("Prosperous Ecosystems and Biodiversity").
Crime, security, and defence
On crime, the Greens emphasise early prevention, advocating for close cooperation between schools, social services, and the police. Towards this end, they propose outreach initiatives like home visits, as well as reducing school and neighbourhood segregation (how this would be done is left unclear).
They support a focus on rehabilitation to prevent re-offending, view non-custodial probation measures (frivårdspåföljder) as the preferred first option for minor offences, and oppose lowering the age of criminal responsibility.
The Greens support targeting the criminal economy as a way to break gang criminal structures, specifically advocating for any seized crime profits to be returned to social welfare systems. They prioritise combating welfare fraud and enhancing government agency cooperation to prevent money laundering and organized economic crime.
They also put emphasis on support for victims, particularly of domestic abuse, honour-based violence, and human trafficking.
In the crime policy section of their platform (section 14) the Greens in a few places say that crime-fighting and surveillance measures should not come at the expense of human rights or the rule of law, and say the need to combat organised crime must be balanced against the individual's right to privacy.
On defence and national security, the Green Party defines security as not strictly military; they consider climate change to be a massive security threat, due to its destruction of livable habitats, triggering of human migration, and fuelling of global conflicts. They believe that ensuring crisis preparedness means the state must maintain firm control over critical infrastructure.
The Green Party voted against Sweden joining Nato. Now that Sweden is a member, their position is that Sweden must maintain an independent security policy. The also have specific policy and procedure positions about Nato, including that it should adopt a 'no first use' nuclear weapons policy, that membership should be restricted to democratic countries, and that no permanent Nato bases or troops be on Swedish territory.
They also support a strong total defence (which integrates civil and military preparedness), advocate for global nuclear disarmament, want Sweden to remain a strictly nuclear-weapon-free zone during both peacetime and wartime, oppose exporting weapons to dictatorships or countries where serious human rights violations take place, and support providing civil, humanitarian, and military aid to countries that have been attacked in violation of international law.
Education
The Greens want to put an end to for-profit schools and see the state take responsibility for school funding to ensure equitable distribution of resources and opportunities for children. They support school system governed by "trust," meaning teachers, principals, and student health service providers are given the confidence, authority, and time to do their jobs and focus on individual students.
The party also wants to limit the role of grades, believing that they should not be introduced until high school and should not be the dominant mode of selection into higher education programmes. They want to see an emphasis on reading, the arts, and practical skills like growing food and performing basic health care.
At the higher education level, their platform strongly advocates for academic freedom, pushing back against tendencies toward the political detail-steering of higher education and research. They want more secure employment contracts for researchers and teachers and stronger student influence. They support admitting students to higher education through diverse pathways, including high school grades, adult education (komvux), the Swedish Scholastic Aptitude Test (högskoleprovet), folk high school assessments (folkhögskoleomdömen), or locally adapted admissions.
They want to encourage more Swedish students to study abroad while enabling more international students to study in Sweden.
Which of the Other Parties Will They Work With?
As is typical with proportional representation political systems, Swedish governments are built as coalitions, with multiple parties needing to work together. How many parties have power or influence, and in what ways, can vary a great deal based on the outcome of a given election, and a common question asked of party leaders during election time in Sweden is which of the other parties they would be willing to work with in a governing coalition.
What have the Greens said? And what's their collaboration track record?
While Green parties are typically considered natural allies with left-wing parties, some in the party consider it to be separate from the typical left-right political spectrum, with some arguing that the party instead should support environmental sustainability first and will work with nearly any party that will help them towards that goal.
In practice, that usually means the Greens are more likely to collaborate with the Left Party and the centre-left Social Democrats, as well as the (typically economically right-wing but socially left-wing) Centre Party than the centre-right parties (the Moderates, Christian Democrats, and the Liberals).
The latter three – which, along with the far-right Sweden Democrats, have formed the governing Tidö coalition of the past four years – have been frequently criticised by the Green party during Tidö's time in power for dismantling many of the environmentally-friendly policies the Greens helped put in place during their time in government (2014-2021).
The one party the Greens say they will never work with is the far-right Sweden Democrats.
What Are Their Chances?
The latest numbers from the highly respected election poll done by Statistics Sweden showed the Green Party at 6.6 percent, up about a point and a half from what they received in the last election (in 2022). The same poll showed the Social Democrats as most likely to get a large enough vote share to lead a governing coalition, with the Left and Green parties as their most likely governing partners.
This is the second article in a series taking a deep dive into the eight Swedish parties' election platforms. We've based the series on the issues The Local's readers told us in a survey earlier in 2026 that you were interested in. The first party guide article was on The Liberals.
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