Swedish language tests: Swedex, Tisus, the SFI national test and the citizenship test that is not written yet

Swedex is ett test i svenska som främmande språk, sat in Sweden and at test centres in a number of other countries, open to anyone aged 14 or over whose mother tongue is not Swedish. Its FAQ lists the uses: working in Sweden, continuing Swedish studies, entry to vissa utbildningar, and — the concrete one — Socialstyrelsen accepts Swedex at C1 for a yrkeslegitimation, the professional licence a nurse, doctor or dentist needs to practise. A quote on the site's front page is a candidate who has min legitimation and starts a new job.

Tisus — Test i svenska för universitets- och högskolestudier — is ett behörighetsgivande test: it qualifies you in Swedish for academic study in Sweden, and it is intended for someone with a foreign upper-secondary diploma who lacks a grade in Swedish. Folkuniversitetet's own FAQ concedes the boundary: Swedex ger generellt inte behörighet för universitetsstudier, some institutions accept it, and for university entry there is a separate test, Tisus, whose level it puts at cirka C1. That C1 is Folkuniversitetet's comparison; Stockholm University's pages do not name a CEFR level for Tisus at all.

The SFI national test belongs to komvux i svenska för invandrare, the municipal adult course for people over 16 who need basic Swedish. Skolverket's course plan has four courses, A, B, C and D, with revised plans in force since 1 July 2025, and the national test is taken en gång i slutet av … kursen — once, at the end of the course, never at another time. It is not a free-standing certificate you can book. Folkuniversitetet places its own B1 ungefär at the level of SFI course D, and draws the distinction that matters: sfi-provet testar att du klarat en specifik kurs medan Swedex testar allmänna kunskaper i svenska.

The citizenship test does not exist yet as a paper. Since 6 June 2026 the citizenship act requires tillräckliga kunskaper i svenska, and until the new test starts that is shown by a school grade, the highest SFI course, the university-entry test — that is, Tisus — or another test showing Swedish på funktionell nivå. Which of the four documents you already hold may therefore already be the one the Migration Agency wants; the details are in the citizenship section below.

Swedex exists in two versions: an A2B1 test and a B2C1 test. You do not register for a level; you register for a band, and where inside it you land is decided by your score. This is the same design as Finland's YKI, documented in the YKI guide, and the opposite of the DELE or the Goethe-Zertifikat, which ask you to name a level before you sit anything. The FAQ adds a consolation rule at each band's floor: a score strax under the A2 line in the A2B1 test can still earn an A1 certificate, and just under the B2 line in the B2C1 test earns a B1. So the certificate range is A1 to C1 although the tests are labelled A2 to C1.

Four parts, every one compulsory: läsförståelse, hörförståelse, skriftlig uppgift, muntlig uppgift — reading, listening, writing, speaking. Reading and listening are scored on points; writing and speaking are assessed by test leaders against set criteria. Each part gets its own level, and the FAQ is explicit that nivån kan variera mellan de olika testdelarna.

Then the rule that makes Swedex unlike the aggregate-scored exams on this site: the certificate carries the lowest level of the four. Folkuniversitetet's own example is listening C1, reading C1, writing B2, speaking C1 — = B2. There is no averaging and no total. A separate document lists the four part results, so the C1s are not lost, but the headline level is your weakest skill. If a licence needs C1 in everything, one B2 costs you the whole C1.

The remedy is the restprov: if you missed the level on one part, you can re-sit that part alone rather than the whole test, inom ett halvår — and, the FAQ says, senast den 31 december 2026. Read literally, that closes the single-part re-sit at the end of this year; the page does not say what replaces it. Ask the centre before relying on it. A re-mark (ombedömning) of one part costs 1 500 kronor including VAT, ordered from the head test centre in Gothenburg, and is refunded if it raises your overall result.

The certificate arrives about three weeks after the exam. Since 2022 the format reports both the overall level and each individual skill; the first Swedex tests were launched in May 2005.

The FAQ answers the price question in one sentence: Pris och sista anmälningsdag varierar mellan olika testcenter. Kontakta det testcenter där du vill göra Swedex. Folkuniversitetet publishes no fee, no range and no example; each test centre sets its own price and its own registration deadline. Registration is with the centre, with a copy of your passport or ID card attached to the form.

That puts Swedex in the same posture as the DELF and DALF in the exam comparison: a body that does not merely omit the price but names the party holding it. Any single figure you find online for Swedex is one centre's price at one sitting. The only numbers on the body's own pages are the 1 500 kronor re-mark and the age floor of 14.

Tisus has three sub-tests — reading comprehension, writing proficiency, speaking proficiency — and two grades, Godkänt and Underkänt. There are no levels. To pass Tisus you must pass all three parts. Fail one and you may re-sit that part alone, a residual test, within a year of your first sitting, which means at one of the next two occasions, at any centre in Sweden or abroad. Fail two or three and you re-sit the whole test.

It is given twice a year, in May and in October or November, on the same dates in Sweden and abroad but with different application windows. The dates published on 21 September 2026: 20–21 October 2026 (Swedish applications closed 11 September), 11–12 May 2027 (applications 22 February to 2 April 2027), 26–27 October 2027, and 9–10 May 2028. Reading and writing are usually a Tuesday morning and take about four hours; the oral is on the Tuesday or Wednesday, at a time in the invitation emailed about three weeks before.

In Sweden the test is held in Linköping, Lund, Malmö, Stockholm, Umeå and Uppsala, with limited seats, so a centre can fill before the closing date and you can be referred to your second choice. Abroad there are no permanent centres: Stockholm University runs the test at roughly seventy locations on all continents through embassies, consulates, Swedish schools abroad and universities with Swedish departments, wherever there is demand and a test leader. In 2025 the busiest were Athens, London, San Francisco and Zürich, with the university's own warning that this guarantees nothing about the next date. Abroad you send an expression of interest first and pay only once a place is confirmed.

Results take about five weeks and come by email, timed to land before the supporting-documents deadline at antagning.se, and a pass is sent to University Admissions directly for the imminent semester. A passed Tisus is equivalent to a grade, that is, it has no expiration date. It is not a knowledge test: nothing has to have been read, but the writing and speaking papers often require some knowledge about Swedish society, current problems and current events. Tisus has been an ALTE member since 1996, has held the ALTE Q-mark since 2016, and replaced the earlier Rikstest in 1997.

Unlike Swedex, Tisus publishes its fees. From 2026: 2 380 kronor for the full test in Sweden and 1 190 kronor for a residual test; abroad, 2 875 kronor for the full test and 1 440 kronor for a residual, paid by card through PayEx once your place is confirmed. Abroad there is ofta an additional fee to the local test leader for postage, room hire and invigilation, paid directly on the day, and its size is not published.

A refund is possible up to eleven calendar days before the test, minus an administrative charge; after that the registration is binding, and the fee cannot be moved to the next sitting or to another person. Candidates with dyslexia or another lasting disability most commonly receive 50% extra writing time, on a certificate sent at least four weeks before a Swedish sitting and six weeks before one abroad. There is a scholarship fund, Stipendiefonden för svensk utlandsungdom, for Swedish youth abroad.

Skolverket's rules for the national tests in komvux i sfi are short and strict. The test is taken once, at the end of the course; it is inte tillåtet to run it at any other time. It is sat i utbildningsanordnarens lokaler under rektors ansvar — on the provider's premises, under the head's responsibility — and may not be taken remotely; for an oral part the assessing teacher must be in the room. The stated reason is equal conditions and fair assessment for every student.

Two administrative dates matter for anyone finishing a course this year. Teacher information for the coming SFI national tests is to be published in autumn 2026, and from spring 2027 it will be digital for every new test, replacing the printed gröna häftet. If you are on course D now, your test is the one whose information has not yet been published.

What an SFI grade is worth outside the classroom is answered by the citizenship act rather than by Skolverket: the highest SFI course is one of the four ways to show sufficient Swedish for naturalisation, listed next.

Lag (2026:447), in force 6 June 2026, added a language condition to 11 § of the Swedish citizenship act: an applicant must have visat tillräckliga kunskaper i svenska och om det svenska samhället, with an exemption at 67 and residence lengthened to eight years. What counts, for now, is in 13 a §: a passing grade in Swedish or Swedish as a second language from the final year of compulsory or upper-secondary school, the highest SFI course, the test universities use for entry — Tisus — or ett annat kunskapsprov i svenska som med hög grad av säkerhet visar kunskaper i svenska på funktionell nivå. Whether Swedex is such a test is not stated in the act; the act names no exam and no CEFR letter.

From 1 October 2027, under Lag (2026:448), a national medborgarskapsprov i svenska takes over, testing reading and listening på funktionell nivå, run by the Universitets- och högskolerådet, with a fee the ordinance (2026:451) sets at 2 000 kronor. A further law, (2026:449), adds speaking and writing på grundläggande nivå on a date the government has not yet set. Anyone with a passing school grade in Danish or Norwegian from another Nordic country is exempt under 13 b §. The full quotation and how Sweden's funktionell nivå sits beside seventeen other countries' requirements — B1 in Germany and Norway, A2 in Spain, B2 in France — is in the citizenship-level comparison.

Folkuniversitetet's FAQ gives the only timeline either body publishes, and attributes it: ca 200 lektionstimmar för varje nivå, citing University of Cambridge's guided-learning-hours research, and for C1 minst 1,5 år of Swedish study, with the immediate caveat that this varierar stort från person till person by intensity, prior languages, age and use. Read that as two hundred lesson hours per CEFR step, not two hundred hours of contact with the language.

Stockholm University publishes no hours for Tisus. Its advice is what to do rather than how long: read Swedish fiction and newspapers for the vocabulary, know current Swedish affairs for the writing and speaking papers, work through the sample material, and if you doubt you will pass, apply for a university course in svenska som främmande språk by 15 October or 15 April — those courses give the same entry qualification as the test. A Swedish tutor's job here is the part neither body can give you: someone to argue current affairs with in Swedish, and someone to tell you which of the four Swedex skills is the one that will set your certificate's level.