Information for those who have applied for Norwegian citizenship

Today, UDI has approximately 16,000 unprocessed applications for Norwegian citizenship. 

We are currently processing applications from those who met with the police before 1 September 2023. This means that we are processing applications that were submitted to the police during the entire year of 2022 or earlier, and until 1 September 2023. By processing applications from a longer period of time, more people will receive their decisions faster than before. This waiting time also applies to those who have a reduced required residence time due to sufficient income. 

We will not be able to provide any further information about the waiting time for your application even if you contact us  

Every month we update the information on our website about which applications we are currently processing. We ask that you check this information. If you contact us, we cannot provide any other information about the waiting time for your application than what is stated on our website. Telephone inquiries take valuable time away from the actual processing of applications, as the same case officers answer the phone and process applications.

We will contact you if there are any documents missing that we need to process your application. You will also receive a letter from us as soon as your application has been processed.

We apologise for the long waiting time, and thank you for your patience.

More applicants will have their application processed automatically 

Some people already have their application automatically processed shortly after they have applied. For a long time, we have been working on measures to ensure that even more applications from Syrian citizens are automatically processed. More people therefore get answers faster. This applies to both newer and older applications. 

You cannot contact UDI to have your application processed automatically. 

All applications for Norwegian citizenship are fully or partially processed automatically. Our computer system uses the information we have about you, and assesses whether Norwegian citizenship can be granted without a caseworker looking at the application. The computer system is not able to assess all types of information, and therefore many applications must still be processed by a caseworker. 

You can read more about automatic processing of applications here. 

Children with parents who have become Norwegian citizens will be given priority 

We will prioritise applications for children under the age of 18 who have not yet received a response. This applies to children in cases where both parents are registered with parental responsibility in the National Population Register (Folkeregisteret) and have obtained Norwegian citizenship. The same applies if the child has only one parent with registered sole parental responsibility for the child, and this parent has become a Norwegian citizen. 

If you have children who have applied for Norwegian citizenship, this means the following: 

• If the child has one parent who has registered sole parental responsibility, and this parent has become a Norwegian citizen: The child will receive an answer to their application within two months from the date the parent became a Norwegian citizen. 
• If the child has two parents with registered joint parental responsibility for the child, and both parents have become Norwegian citizens: The child will receive a response to their application within two months from the date the parents became Norwegian citizens. 
• If the child has two parents with registered joint parental responsibility, and only one parent has become a Norwegian citizen: We do not prioritize the application from the child. 

If we need more information to process the child's application, we will send a letter stating what information we are missing within two months from the date the parents, or the person with sole parental responsibility, became Norwegian citizens. 

We cannot guarantee that family members will receive an answer to their applications at the same time 

We have chosen to work in a way that, overall, will lead to more people getting a response to the application faster. This means that we unfortunately cannot guarantee that everyone in a family will have their applications processed at the same time. 

We cannot give priority to applications for Norwegian citizenship even if one or more of your family members have received a response to their applications. Children under the age of 18 who have parents with Norwegian citizenship will still be given priority, as explained above. 

This information was last updated on 

. It will be updated again on 

.