Swedish Embassy in New Delhi

Indian-resident applicants for a Schengen visa to Sweden — tourism, family visits, business travel, conference and cultural visits — file through the Swedish Visa Application Centres operated by VFS Global, with biometric capture in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Goa. Decisioning happens at the Embassy of Sweden on Nyaya Marg in the Chanakyapuri diplomatic enclave. The Migration Section at 4-5 Nyaya Marg also handles the substantial pipeline of long-stay Swedish residence permits: work permits for Indian IT engineers, ICT-permit inter-company transfers (the major Indian IT-services groups TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL and Cognizant route substantial inbound staff flows to their Swedish operations via this route), EU Blue Card for graduate-level employment, student permits for Indian degree-seekers at Swedish technical universities (KTH, Chalmers, Lund, Linköping, Uppsala in particular), family-reunification permits, sambo permits for unmarried partners of Swedish residents, and entrepreneur permits. The embassy is also the South Asia regional accreditation hub for Sweden — it covers Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives by accreditation, with honorary consulates in Thimphu, Kathmandu, Colombo and Malé providing the local relay (the Kathmandu post is a Consulate-General led by an Honorary Consul-General; the others are honorary consulates). Bhutanese, Nepalese, Sri Lankan and Maldivian applicants whose VFS application route requires escalation to the decisioning post in person are routed to New Delhi. For Swedish nationals in India — a community estimated at 1,500 to 2,000 residents plus a substantial inbound business and tourism flow — the Consular Section handles Swedish passport renewal, Coordination Number (samordningsnummer) issuance for civil-status purposes, certifications and apostille services (Sweden and India are both parties to the Hague Apostille Convention since 2005, so the embassy issues apostilles for Swedish documents for use in India and certifies Indian apostilles where the receiving Swedish authority needs counter-confirmation), voter registration for Swedish elections, and emergency consular assistance through the Stockholm UD Crisis Management line. Swedish business presence in India — Volvo Trucks (Bengaluru manufacturing), Volvo Buses, Scania, Atlas Copco, SKF, Sandvik, ABB, Ericsson, IKEA (sourcing and retail), H&M (sourcing and retail), Tetra Pak, Alfa Laval, Electrolux, Sandvik Coromant, Husqvarna, AstraZeneca (R&D), TetraPak, Höganäs and others — is among the largest single-country business presences in India after the major G7 economies and provides the operational backdrop for the trade-and-investment work of the embassy.

The Consular Section serves the Swedish national community in India — registered Swedish residents number around 1,500 to 2,000, concentrated in Mumbai (Swedish industrial-and-trade community), Bengaluru (the Volvo manufacturing hub and the broader Swedish tech-and-engineering presence), Delhi NCR (diplomatic and embassy community), Pune (automotive and engineering), Chennai (manufacturing) and Goa (long-stay residents and retirees). The full Swedish consular pipeline runs from New Delhi: passport renewal and biometric passport issuance (the embassy is an issuing post on the Swedish passport network), Swedish national ID-card issuance, Coordination Number (samordningsnummer) and Personnummer support for Swedish residents abroad, civil-status notification to Skatteverket of births, marriages and deaths abroad, voter registration for Swedish parliamentary, municipal, regional and European Parliament elections (the embassy is a Swedish overseas polling station during election windows), notarial certifications, apostille issuance for Swedish-issued documents to be used in India under the Hague Apostille Convention, and emergency consular assistance for Swedish nationals in detention, hospitalisation, victims of crime, repatriation or bereavement. For inbound Swedish travel into the region — tourism, business and a substantial yoga, ayurveda and spiritual retreat flow into India's south and west, plus the trekking and Himalayan flow into Sikkim, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand — the embassy's consular monitoring extends to Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives by accreditation. Out-of-hours emergencies anywhere in the consular district route through the UD Sweden Crisis Management Centre in Stockholm on +46 8 405 50 05, which coordinates with the New Delhi embassy for in-country action.

Swedish foreign direct investment in India is among the most substantial single-country FDI positions of any Nordic economy and one of the more substantial European positions outside Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK. Cumulative Swedish FDI in India runs in the range of USD 2 to 3 billion across the major industrial Swedish names (Volvo Trucks Bengaluru — among the largest Volvo manufacturing footprints outside Sweden; Volvo Buses; Atlas Copco's Pune manufacturing and Indian distribution hub; SKF's substantial Indian manufacturing across Pune, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad; Sandvik in Pune; ABB across multiple Indian states; Alfa Laval in Pune and Sericulture; Tetra Pak; Höganäs; Husqvarna; AstraZeneca's Indian R&D operations including the AstraZeneca India biopharma centre in Bengaluru), plus the substantial IKEA retail and sourcing presence (the Hyderabad megastore opened in 2018 was the first IKEA in India; subsequent Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR stores followed) and the H&M retail rollout. Indian outbound FDI into Sweden has grown substantially since the mid-2000s, concentrated on the Indian IT-services majors' Swedish delivery centres (TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL, Cognizant, Tech Mahindra), Indian pharmaceutical-and-generics groups establishing Swedish marketing and regulatory operations, and the occasional larger industrial acquisition (Tata Steel's earlier Corus / British Steel transactions had Swedish ramifications via the Boden-Luleå supply chain). The embassy's investment promotion work includes coordinating the bilateral CEO Forum and the joint Swedish-Indian Innovation Partnership which focuses on green industrial transition, life sciences, smart cities, advanced manufacturing and ICT — running joint programmes with Vinnova (Sweden's innovation agency), the Department of Science and Technology of India and the major Indian research councils.

Cultural and educational programming runs through the Swedish Institute (Svenska Institutet) India operations, the Embassy Cultural Section, the Indian-Swedish university research-and-mobility partnerships, and the Swedish-Indian Cultural Foundation. Educational mobility is the single most substantial Swedish-Indian non-commercial flow: Indian students at Swedish universities (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Chalmers University of Technology, Lund University, Uppsala University, Linköping University, Stockholm University, Karolinska Institutet for medical and life sciences, Luleå University of Technology) number in the high single thousands across master's, doctoral and research-exchange programmes, with the Swedish Institute scholarship programmes (SI Scholarships for Global Professionals) supporting a growing cohort. The Erasmus Mundus framework and the EU-India Mobility Partnership feed additional Indian-Swedish university traffic. The Swedish Institute's Sweden 101 introductory programmes, Swedish-language outreach, and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee programmes for visual artists, designers and performing-arts practitioners support the cultural flow. Embassy-curated cultural programming includes the Swedish National Day reception on 6 June, the Sweden-India Innovation Partnership annual showcase, Swedish cinema (Swedish Film Institute) programming at Delhi and Mumbai festivals, Swedish-design programming with India Design Forum, and the Swedish-Indian musical-and-performing-arts exchanges anchored on the Stockholm-based Music Export Sweden and the Indian classical-music institutions. Swedish-Indian co-production in publishing, design and media has expanded substantially via the Pixel/Visual Sweden and Indian design council partnerships. The Swedish Institute also runs the popular Si Alumni Network India for Indian alumni of Swedish universities and SI scholarship recipients.

Schengen short-stay visa appointments are booked through the VFS Global Sweden India portal. Long-stay residence-permit applications are filed online through the Swedish Migration Agency (Migrationsverket) portal, with biometric capture booked through the same VFS network or directly at the embassy depending on category. Swedish passport, ID-card, civil-status and consular appointments are booked through the embassy's online booking system on the Sweden Abroad portal. Phone enquiries route through the switchboard +91 11 4419 7100 during office hours. The Migration Section line is +91 11 4566 6300 and migration.new-delhi@gov.se. General consular enquiries are at ambassaden.new-delhi@gov.se. Out-of-hours emergencies route through the Sweden UD Crisis Management Centre in Stockholm on +46 8 405 50 05, available 24 hours.