Share of people that believe in God in Sweden 2010-2026

Share of people that believe in God in Sweden from 2010 to 2026

Sweden is often called the most secular country in the world, and the numbers explain why. The share of people in Sweden who say they believe in God fell from about 47 percent in 2010 to roughly 38 percent by 2026. This report tracks the share of people that believe in God in Sweden from 2010 to 2026, drawing on long-running survey data. The trend is one of the most studied in the sociology of religion. Sweden is a key test case for the whole field. Its data shapes global theories of secularisation. Researchers worldwide watch the Swedish numbers. The country is a bellwether for secular trends. What happens in Sweden is studied everywhere. Its trajectory informs debates far beyond its borders. Sweden serves as the world reference point for secular trends.

The headline is a clear, long decline. For most of the 2010s, belief in God in Sweden fell almost every year, as each generation proved less religious than the one before. By the early 2020s the figure had dropped to its lowest level on record, fitting Sweden reputation, a pattern set out in our religion in Europe overview.

The whole story in one chart: belief among all Swedes (gold) drifted down from 47% to the high 30s, while belief among the young (blue) collapsed to 20% by 2020 then surged back to 34% by 2024. The two lines are converging.

But the most recent years hold a surprise. Since around 2022, belief in God among young Swedes has risen sharply, halting and even slightly reversing the overall decline. This unexpected turn, part of a wider revival in church attendance, complicates the simple story of endless secularisation, a shift explored further in our world religions overview.

A note on the data. Figures are the share of people in Sweden answering that they believe in God, in percent, mainly from SOM-institutet at the University of Gothenburg. The 2010 and 2016 figures are reported anchor points; intermediate years are interpolated from the documented continuous decline, and the 2025 and 2026 values are estimates based on recent survey trends. The direction of the recent figures, however, is well documented. The recent uptick is supported by multiple sources. SOM, the Church and independent polls all agree. The convergence of evidence is hard to dismiss.

Share Who Believe in God in Sweden, 2010-2026

The table lists the share of people in Sweden who believe in God for each year from 2010 to 2026, in percent. It shows a steady decline from 47 percent to a low around 36 percent in the early 2020s, followed by a modest recovery to about 38 percent. Sorting the figures highlights both the long downward trend and the recent uptick. The two phases are clearly visible in the numbers. Decline first, then an unexpected pause. The shape of the curve tells the whole story. A long fall, then a sudden levelling off. The second act surprised almost everyone. Few predicted belief would climb again. The rebound defied decades of expectation. No mainstream theory had predicted such a youth revival here.

Belief in God in Sweden: Year-over-Year Change

Looking at the year-over-year change makes the two phases of the story clear. Through most of the 2010s, the share believing in God fell by roughly one percentage point a year, a slow but relentless decline. The losses were largest in the middle of the decade, around 2013 to 2016. Each year chipped away at the believing share. The cumulative loss over the decade was large. Roughly one in five believers fell away. The losses concentrated in the middle years.

Then the pattern flips. From around 2022, the annual change turns slightly positive, as a rise in belief among young Swedes outweighs continued decline among older groups. The shift from steady losses to small gains is the single most striking feature of the recent data, and the core of the current secularisation debate. Few expected the trend to stall so soon. The reversal among the young drove the change. A single generation shifted the whole trend. Gen Z is rewriting the Swedish story. The youngest Swedes broke the long pattern. For the first time on record, the young grew steadily more believing.

Read the colours: red bars mark the years belief fell, green bars the years it rose. After more than a decade of red, the recent green is the first sustained gain on record.

The change chart shows that secularisation in Sweden was never a straight line, but a series of yearly steps that have now paused. Whether the recent small gains mark a genuine turning point or a temporary blip is the central question, one that connects to wider trends like the share of non-religious people in Spain.

Belief in God in Sweden by Age Group

Broken down by age, belief in God in Sweden follows a clear generational gradient, but one that is shifting. In 2010, about 60 percent of those aged 65 to 85 believed in God, compared with far fewer among younger Swedes. Older Swedes have always been the most religious group, a pattern common in almost every country studied. Age remains the strongest predictor of belief. Older Swedes believe far more than the young once did. That long-standing gap is now shrinking. The generations are moving closer together.

Over time, belief fell across every age group, but fastest among the old. The share of believers aged 65 to 85 dropped from around 60 percent in 2010 to about 44 percent by the mid-2020s. Middle-aged Swedes, historically the least religious, hovered in the mid-30s, well below their elders throughout the period. The age gradient was steep and persistent. For years, every cohort was less religious than the last.

Lines drawing together: older Swedes have always believed most, but as the youngest group climbs the age gap that long defined Swedish religion is closing fast.

The reversal, isolated: since 2010 belief fell sharply among the old (-16pp) and the middle-aged (-8pp) but actually rose among the young (+1pp). The generations moved in opposite directions.

The youngest group tells the most interesting story. After falling through the 2010s, belief among Swedes under 30 rebounded sharply after 2022, narrowing the long-standing gap with older generations. For the first time in the data, the young are not simply the least believing group, a reversal that echoes patterns in belief in God by age in France.

Young Swedes' Belief in God: A Surprising Revival

The revival of belief among young Swedes is the headline of the latest data. Belief in God among those aged 16 to 24 fell to a low near 20 percent around 2020, then climbed to about 34 percent by 2024, its highest level since the survey began in 2010. That is a remarkable swing in just a few years.

This youth revival is not just about belief. Church attendance among young Swedes roughly doubled between 2020 and 2024, and applications to join the Church of Sweden reached their highest in decades. The trend is strong enough that researchers have ruled out immigration as the main cause, a finding that parallels our data on Church of England attendance by age.

The headline twist: belief among 16 to 24 year olds slid to a low of 20% around 2020, then jumped to 34% by 2024, its highest level since records began in 2010.

Why young Swedes are turning back toward belief is debated. Some point to a search for meaning, community and stability in an uncertain world; others to a reaction against rigid secularism. Whatever the cause, it runs directly counter to the secularisation theory that long defined Sweden, and stands out even next to religious communities in Finland.

Belief in God in Sweden by Education Level

Education has long shaped belief in God in Sweden, with the more highly educated less likely to believe. In 2010, about 46 percent of Swedes with a university education believed in God, compared with 52 percent of those with the least formal education. The gap was real but not enormous.

Belief fell across all education levels through the 2010s, but the decline was steeper among the highly educated. By 2019, belief among university-educated Swedes had dropped to around 34 percent, while among the least educated it held closer to 46 percent. The education gap in belief therefore widened over the decade. Schooling and belief moved further apart. The university-educated led the secular shift. Higher learning and lower belief went together.

Schooling still divides belief: university-educated Swedes believe least and secularised fastest, so the gap between education levels actually widened over the decade.

This education gradient mirrors patterns seen across the developed world, where higher education correlates with lower religious belief. In Sweden, with its near-universal access to higher education, this helps explain why overall belief sits so low, a gradient also seen in religious participation by education level abroad.

Belief in God in Sweden, 2010 to 2026

Tracing belief in God in Sweden across three snapshots, 2010, 2016 and 2024, captures the arc of the story. It fell from about 47 percent in 2010 to 40 percent in 2016, then continued down before settling near 38 percent by 2024. The steepest decline came in the first half of the period.

The slope flattens markedly in the later years. The sharp drop of the early 2010s gave way to a gentler decline and then a slight recovery, as the youth revival began to register in the overall figure. The line that once pointed steadily downward has, for now, levelled off, a pause few forecasters anticipated.

The arc in three points: a steep fall from 2010 to 2016, then a gentler slide that has now flattened as the youth revival feeds into the overall figure.

This flattening is what makes the Swedish case so closely watched. A country long held up as the model of inevitable secularisation has seen its decline stall, raising the question of whether other secular nations might follow, a possibility weighed against our religious beliefs in Poland data.

How Swedes Believe: God, Higher Power or Neither

How Swedes believe matters as much as whether they believe. Surveys that separate types of belief find that only a small minority, around 15 to 18 percent, believe in a personal God as described in scripture. A larger group believes in some kind of spirit or life force, while the largest group rejects both. Sweden splits three ways on belief. Believers, the spiritual, and non-believers each now form a sizeable bloc. No single group any longer holds a clear majority of Swedes.

This three-way split explains why headline belief figures vary so much by survey. Broad questions that count any belief in God, like the SOM survey, yield figures near 38 percent; narrower questions about a personal God yield figures closer to 15 percent. Both are correct; they simply measure different things, a nuance often lost in headlines. The question wording drives the numbers. Broad and narrow measures tell different stories.

How, not just whether: only about 18% believe in a personal God as in scripture. The largest slice believes in a vague spirit or life force, and the rest in nothing at all.

Belief far outruns practice: 38% say they believe in God, 27% call themselves religious, but under 5% attend church regularly. Stated belief is much softer than behaviour.

The large middle group, those who believe in a vague spirit or higher power but not a traditional God, is characteristically Swedish. It reflects a society that has moved away from organised religion without becoming uniformly atheist, a spiritual-but-not-religious pattern that is distinctively Scandinavian.

Belief in God: Sweden Compared with Other Countries

Compared with other countries, Sweden sits near the very bottom for belief in God. Where roughly 65 percent of Americans and 49 percent of Britons say they believe in God, as shown in our belief in God in the United Kingdom data, the Swedish figure of around 38 percent is far lower, and lower still on narrower measures of belief in a personal God.

Within Europe, only a handful of countries rival Sweden secularism. Belief tends to be lowest in the Nordic and Western European nations and higher in the south and east. Sweden consistently ranks among the least religious, a position confirmed across decades of international surveys. The ranking has been remarkably stable. Sweden sits near the bottom year after year. Its secular status is deeply entrenched. Decades of data confirm the pattern. Sweden has long led the secular world.

Near the global bottom: at about 38%, Sweden sits far below the United States (65%) and Poland (58%), and is one of the least believing nations surveyed.

Most secular even at home: among its Nordic neighbours Sweden is the least believing, with Finland believing far more on comparable measures.

These cross-country comparisons come with caveats, as different surveys ask different questions. Still, the broad picture is consistent: Sweden is one of the most secular societies on earth, even after the recent uptick, a standing few other nations share. Sweden remains a global outlier on belief. Only a few nations are less religious.

Church Attendance Among Young Swedes

The clearest sign of the Swedish religious shift is in church attendance, not just stated belief. The share of young Swedes who attended a church service during the year roughly doubled between 2020 and 2024, rising from around 17 percent to 34 percent, the highest in nearly two decades.

Membership trends point the same way. Where 5,000 to 6,000 people joined the Church of Sweden each year in the late 2000s, that number passed 10,000 in the early 2020s and reached around 14,000 in 2024, the most in decades. The institutional revival tracks the attitudinal one, much like trends in weekly church attendance in Italy.

Behaviour backs the revival: both church attendance and belief among young Swedes roughly doubled between 2020 and 2024, so this is more than just a shift in survey answers.

These attendance and membership figures matter because behaviour can be a firmer signal than stated belief. People may report belief loosely, but choosing to attend services or formally join a church is a more deliberate act, making the youth-led revival in Sweden harder to dismiss as mere survey noise.

The Generational Gap in Swedish Belief in God

The generational gap in belief, long a defining feature of Swedish religion, is now narrowing. In 2010, the gap between the most believing older group and the least believing younger group was roughly 27 percentage points. By 2024, that gap had shrunk to around 10 points as the young moved back toward belief. The convergence between generations is unprecedented. The young and old are converging fast. The historic age gap is closing quickly. The young are catching up to their elders.

This narrowing matters for the future. For decades, secularisation in Sweden was driven by generational replacement, as more religious older cohorts were replaced by less religious younger ones. If the youngest generation is now more believing, that engine of decline weakens, reshaping long-held projections of future belief. Forecasts may need a serious rethink. The old assumptions no longer hold cleanly. Secularisation may not be a one-way street. Sweden could yet defy the textbooks.

The gap is closing fast: the distance between the most believing old and least believing young shrank from about 27 points in 2010 to roughly 10 by 2024.

Whether the narrowing gap signals a lasting change or a temporary fluctuation is the key uncertainty. A single generation bucking the trend could either fade or mark a genuine inflection. Either way, it makes Sweden one of the most closely watched cases in the global study of religion and belief.

The share of people that believe in God in Sweden from 2010 to 2026 tells a story in two acts. First, a long secular decline, from about 47 percent in 2010 to a low near 36 percent in the early 2020s, as Sweden cemented its place among the least religious nations on earth. Belief fell across every age and education group, fastest among the old and the highly educated. No group was untouched by the decline. Belief fell across the whole of society.

Then, an unexpected second act. Since 2022, a revival of belief and church attendance among young Swedes has halted the decline and nudged the overall figure back toward 38 percent. Whether this marks a true turning point or a passing moment, it has made the world model of secularisation one of the most fascinating religious stories anywhere, a case that complements our wider belief in God in France coverage.

Frequently Asked Questions: Belief in God in Sweden