Prayer Times in Sweden

Muslims and mosques in Sweden

Sweden does not record religion, so every number for Muslims is an estimate. The US State Department's 2014 religious freedom report gave about 600,000 people, or 6% of the population, and the Pew Research Center estimated about 800,000, or 8%, with a Muslim background in 2016, while the Swedish Agency for Support to Faith Communities counted 200,445 regular practitioners registered with Islamic congregations in 2019. The difference is the gap between people of Muslim background, who may not practise, and members of congregations. In 2000 the community was estimated at 300,000 to 350,000, around 3.5% of the population, so it has more than doubled in a generation.

Muslim Sweden is the product of successive waves of migration. Communities from the Balkans, including Bosniaks from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sandžak and Kosovo, were joined by people from Iran, and Iraq became the largest origin group by 2015. Syria and Somalia are the fastest-growing origin groups, while Turkey and Lebanon are among the longer-established origins. Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö have the main mosques and organisations.

The first purpose-built mosques are recent. The Nasir Mosque in Gothenburg, built by the Ahmadiyya community in 1976, is the oldest, followed by the Malmö Mosque in 1984, the Uppsala Mosque in 1995 and the Stockholm Mosque in 2000. The Muslim Council of Sweden (SMR) was founded in 1990, and the Islamic Association in Sweden (IFiS), which has its headquarters at the Stockholm Mosque, was formed in 1995. Swedish faith communities can apply for state support through the Agency for Support to Faith Communities, and Islamic congregations are among those that receive it.

Latitude is the main thing to know about prayer times in Sweden. Stockholm lies at about 59 degrees north, Malmö at 56 and Kiruna at 68, so for several weeks around midsummer true night does not occur in much of the country, and in the far north the sun does not set at all. On this site's calculation the fast from Fajr to Maghrib in Stockholm lasts about 19 and a half hours on 21 June and 8 and a half hours on 21 December. Fajr and Isha are therefore set with a high-latitude rule, and some Muslims in the far north follow the times of a city further south. Communities start Ramadan and Eid on different days, because some follow their home country, some Saudi Arabia and some local calculation; each mosque sets its own congregation times.

Sources, checked 2026-10: Wikipedia: Islam in Sweden; Wikipedia: Stockholm Mosque.