Sweden to hold knife-edge election Sunday with migration in focus

September 10, 2026 at 06:29 PM2 min

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Sweden will hold a general election on Sunday, with national polls showing the centre-left bloc led by the Social Democrats only a few percentage points ahead of the right-wing group. Migration is a key election issue, and the multicultural city of Malmo, where more than a third of its 368,000 residents were born outside Sweden, has become the centre of the debate. The far-right Sweden Democrats campaign metres apart from the Left Party in Malmo's central square.

Key Facts

National polls show the centre-left opposition bloc led by the Social Democrats a few percentage points ahead of the right-wing group, with the gap tightening over the past month.
More than a third of Malmo's 368,000 residents were born outside Sweden.
In 2017, Nigel Farage branded Malmo the "rape capital of Europe", a claim a leading Swedish criminologist dismissed as nonsense.
The Million Programme built one million new homes between 1965 and 1974.

Election Landscape

National polls have Sunday's election on a knife-edge, with the centre-left opposition bloc led by the Social Democrats just a few percentage points ahead of the right-wing group. That gap has tightened over the past month. In Malmo's central square, representatives of the Left Party and the far-right Sweden Democrats campaign a metre apart. Migration is a key election issue.

Malmo's Role

Multicultural Malmo, with more than a third of the city's 368,000 residents born outside Sweden, has become the centre of the debate. For the right, the city represents failures of integration, a cautionary tale of what happens when immigration goes unchecked. Beyond Sweden, Malmo draws disproportionate interest. In 2017, Nigel Farage branded it the "rape capital of Europe", a claim a leading Swedish criminologist dismissed as nonsense. Germany's far-right AfD has used Malmo in its narratives about the dangers of immigration.

Million Programme Legacy

Anfal Mahdi, an opposition councillor in Malmo for the Left Party, said right-wing politicians ignore the socioeconomic challenges of living in the areas built under Sweden's "Million Programme". The programme was an ambitious scheme to build one million new homes between 1965 and 1974. It began as a social housing initiative for working-class Swedish families. In later decades, as many of those families moved out, the apartments were allocated to migrant and refugee newcomers. Mahdi, whose family fled Iraq after the Gulf War, grew up in one of these areas during cuts to the welfare state after Sweden's early-1990s economic crisis.