Crime · Sweden · Updated 2026-10-26

How many people are shot dead in Sweden?

In 2025, official counts put the number of people shot dead in Sweden at 42 to 43: Brå's review of police reports found 42 (0.40 per 100,000), Socialstyrelsen's cause-of-death register 42 and the police's preliminary shooting statistics 43; all three are below their 2022 peak (63, 59 and 62).

Every figure in this summary is calculated from the sources listed on this page.

People shot dead in Sweden, 2025

People killed by gunfire from another person (gun homicide); suicides, accidents and lawful use of force are excluded. Sweden, Calendar year 2025. Unit: deaths.

42deaths, 2025

87Trust scoreHigh certainty

Quality32.9 / 40: How well the sources are made
Agreement28.6 / 30: How close the sources are to each other
Independence16 / 20: How many separate ways the number was measured
Freshness10 / 10: How recent the newest data is

How much each source counts

Brå56%
Death register22%
Police22%

Sources

Source	Value	Definition	Quality	Weight
Brå, Konstaterade fall av dödligt våld: fall med skjutvapen (Tabell 22)Brottsförebyggande rådet (Brå) · Police and justice recordsRetrieved 2026-10-26	422025	Victims of completed murder, manslaughter, infanticide or assault causing death in Sweden, confirmed by Brå's review of every police report of lethal violence, where a firearm requiring a licence under the Weapons Act was the fatal method (firearm takes precedence over other methods). Counted by the year the report was registered; self-defence cases are excluded. File "Tabell 22" from Brå's page https://bra.se/statistik/statistik-om-rattsvasendet/konstaterade-fall-av-dodligt-vald, first published 31 March 2026; column "Fall med skjutvapen, totalt". Method from the statistics report https://bra.se/download/18.3b6b697b19d24d83762a72f/1774630225606/Statistikrapport_D%C3%B6dligtv%C3%A5ld_2025.pdf.	5 of 5 checks Yes: Method and definitions published. Brå publishes a quality declaration, definitions and a yearly statistics report. Yes: Official statistics or peer-reviewed. Sweden's official statistics (Sveriges officiella statistik), produced by Brå. Yes: Full count or representative sample. Brå reviews every police and prosecution report of completed lethal violence registered in the year. Yes: Raw data downloadable. Yearly counts with and without firearms downloadable as Excel (Tabell 22); case-level data only on request. Yes: No known break or quality problem. Same definition since 2011; Brå corrected 2013 from 26 to 25 firearm cases in March 2020.	56%
Socialstyrelsen, Statistik om dödsorsaker: övergrepp med skjutvapen (X93-X95)Socialstyrelsen (National Board of Health and Welfare) · Death and health registersRetrieved 2026-10-26	422025	Deaths whose underlying cause on the death certificate is assault by firearm (ICD-10 X93 handgun, X94 rifle or shotgun, X95 other or unspecified firearm), women and men, by year of death, for people registered as living in Sweden wherever they died. Not included: firearm deaths of undetermined intent (Y22-Y24, 1 in 2025) and legal intervention with firearms (Y35.0, 1 in 2025). Directness 0.5: the geography differs from "Sweden". The official tables count residents who died abroad and leave out non-residents who died in Sweden, and Socialstyrelsen publishes no table of these causes by place of death, so the count cannot be converted. Each year is Tabell 4A of that year's "Statistik om dödsorsaker" (first publication; Socialstyrelsen later corrects the register for late certificates). 2014-2025 read from the Excel tables, 2012-2013 from the PDF reports (recorded in scripts/sweden-gun-homicide.manual.json). Index page: https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/statistik-och-data/statistik/alla-statistikamnen/dodsorsaker/.	4 of 5 checks Yes: Method and definitions published. Socialstyrelsen publishes a quality declaration and codes the underlying cause with ICD-10. Yes: Official statistics or peer-reviewed. Sweden's official statistics on causes of death, produced by Socialstyrelsen. Yes: Full count or representative sample. Covers every death of a person registered as living in Sweden, from death certificates. Yes: Raw data downloadable. Yearly tables by detailed cause downloadable as Excel from 2014 (PDF for 2012-2013); record-level data only on application. No: No known break or quality problem. Leaves out people not registered in Sweden who die here; 0.4% of deaths in 2025 had no death certificate and 4.5% an ill-defined cause (up from 2.7% in 2012).	22%
Polisen, Skjutningar per polisregion: avlidnaPolismyndigheten (Swedish Police Authority) · Police and justice recordsRetrieved 2026-10-26	432025	People who died in shootings the police confirmed: projectiles fired from a powder-charged weapon, with traces such as bullets, cases or damage, or more than one independent eyewitness, and the shooting unlawful and not obviously accidental. Counted by month of the shooting; national count kept since November 2016, so the series starts in 2017. Values from the yearly PDFs "Skjutningar per polisregion 2017" to "2025", table "Avlidna", row and column "Totalt" (recorded in scripts/sweden-gun-homicide.manual.json); archive on https://polisen.se/om-polisen/polisens-arbete/sprangningar-och-skjutningar/.	2 of 5 checks Yes: Method and definitions published. Each yearly table states the definition of a confirmed shooting and that the counts are compiled manually. No: Official statistics or peer-reviewed. Operational figures the police compile on a government assignment; not part of Sweden's official statistics. Yes: Full count or representative sample. Counts every confirmed shooting reported anywhere in Sweden, not a sample. No: Raw data downloadable. Monthly counts by police region are published only as PDF tables; no data file. No: No known break or quality problem. The police say the figures are preliminary and can change afterwards; no final revised series is published.	22%

People shot dead in Sweden, 2025, by source · deaths

Brå, Konstaterade fall av dödligt våld: fall med skjutvapen (Tabell 22)
Socialstyrelsen, Statistik om dödsorsaker: övergrepp med skjutvapen (X93-X95)
Polisen, Skjutningar per polisregion: avlidna

Show the data as a table

Year	Brå, Konstaterade fall av dödligt våld: fall med skjutvapen (Tabell 22)	Socialstyrelsen, Statistik om dödsorsaker: övergrepp med skjutvapen (X93-X95)	Polisen, Skjutningar per polisregion: avlidna
2012	17	16	–
2013	25	22	–
2014	28	25	–
2015	33	31	–
2016	30	26	–
2017	40	37	34
2018	43	40	43
2019	45	42	43
2020	48	47	47
2021	45	45	45
2022	63	59	62
2023	53	51	54
2024	45	42	44
2025	42	42	43

Gun homicide rate in Sweden, 2025

People killed by gunfire from another person per 100,000 people. Sweden, Calendar year 2025. Unit: per 100,000 people.

0.4per 100,000 people, 2025

87Trust scoreHigh certainty

Quality32.9 / 40: How well the sources are made
Agreement28.5 / 30: How close the sources are to each other
Independence16 / 20: How many separate ways the number was measured
Freshness10 / 10: How recent the newest data is

How much each source counts

Brå56%
Death register22%
Police22%

Sources

Source	Value	Definition	Quality	Weight
Brå, Konstaterade fall av dödligt våld: fall med skjutvapen (Tabell 22)Brottsförebyggande rådet (Brå) · Police and justice recordsRetrieved 2026-10-26	0.42025	Victims of completed murder, manslaughter, infanticide or assault causing death in Sweden, confirmed by Brå's review of every police report of lethal violence, where a firearm requiring a licence under the Weapons Act was the fatal method (firearm takes precedence over other methods). Counted by the year the report was registered; self-defence cases are excluded. Divided by Sweden's mean population for the year (SCB, medelfolkmängd; 10,596,619.5 in 2025). The same population is used for all three lines. File "Tabell 22" from Brå's page https://bra.se/statistik/statistik-om-rattsvasendet/konstaterade-fall-av-dodligt-vald, first published 31 March 2026; column "Fall med skjutvapen, totalt". Method from the statistics report https://bra.se/download/18.3b6b697b19d24d83762a72f/1774630225606/Statistikrapport_D%C3%B6dligtv%C3%A5ld_2025.pdf. Population: https://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/pxweb/sv/ssd/START__BE__BE0101__BE0101D/MedelfolkHandelse/ and https://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/pxweb/sv/ssd/START__BE__BE0101__BE0101D/MedelfolkHandelseCKM/.	5 of 5 checks Yes: Method and definitions published. Brå publishes a quality declaration, definitions and a yearly statistics report. Yes: Official statistics or peer-reviewed. Sweden's official statistics (Sveriges officiella statistik), produced by Brå. Yes: Full count or representative sample. Brå reviews every police and prosecution report of completed lethal violence registered in the year. Yes: Raw data downloadable. Yearly counts with and without firearms downloadable as Excel (Tabell 22); case-level data only on request. Yes: No known break or quality problem. Same definition since 2011; Brå corrected 2013 from 26 to 25 firearm cases in March 2020.	56%
Socialstyrelsen, Statistik om dödsorsaker: övergrepp med skjutvapen (X93-X95)Socialstyrelsen (National Board of Health and Welfare) · Death and health registersRetrieved 2026-10-26	0.42025	Deaths whose underlying cause on the death certificate is assault by firearm (ICD-10 X93 handgun, X94 rifle or shotgun, X95 other or unspecified firearm), women and men, by year of death, for people registered as living in Sweden wherever they died. Not included: firearm deaths of undetermined intent (Y22-Y24, 1 in 2025) and legal intervention with firearms (Y35.0, 1 in 2025). Directness 0.5: the geography differs from "Sweden". The official tables count residents who died abroad and leave out non-residents who died in Sweden, and Socialstyrelsen publishes no table of these causes by place of death, so the count cannot be converted. Divided by Sweden's mean population for the year (SCB, medelfolkmängd; 10,596,619.5 in 2025). The same population is used for all three lines. Each year is Tabell 4A of that year's "Statistik om dödsorsaker" (first publication; Socialstyrelsen later corrects the register for late certificates). 2014-2025 read from the Excel tables, 2012-2013 from the PDF reports (recorded in scripts/sweden-gun-homicide.manual.json). Index page: https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/statistik-och-data/statistik/alla-statistikamnen/dodsorsaker/. Population: https://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/pxweb/sv/ssd/START__BE__BE0101__BE0101D/MedelfolkHandelse/ and https://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/pxweb/sv/ssd/START__BE__BE0101__BE0101D/MedelfolkHandelseCKM/.	4 of 5 checks Yes: Method and definitions published. Socialstyrelsen publishes a quality declaration and codes the underlying cause with ICD-10. Yes: Official statistics or peer-reviewed. Sweden's official statistics on causes of death, produced by Socialstyrelsen. Yes: Full count or representative sample. Covers every death of a person registered as living in Sweden, from death certificates. Yes: Raw data downloadable. Yearly tables by detailed cause downloadable as Excel from 2014 (PDF for 2012-2013); record-level data only on application. No: No known break or quality problem. Leaves out people not registered in Sweden who die here; 0.4% of deaths in 2025 had no death certificate and 4.5% an ill-defined cause (up from 2.7% in 2012).	22%
Polisen, Skjutningar per polisregion: avlidnaPolismyndigheten (Swedish Police Authority) · Police and justice recordsRetrieved 2026-10-26	0.412025	People who died in shootings the police confirmed: projectiles fired from a powder-charged weapon, with traces such as bullets, cases or damage, or more than one independent eyewitness, and the shooting unlawful and not obviously accidental. Counted by month of the shooting; national count kept since November 2016, so the series starts in 2017. Divided by Sweden's mean population for the year (SCB, medelfolkmängd; 10,596,619.5 in 2025). The same population is used for all three lines. Values from the yearly PDFs "Skjutningar per polisregion 2017" to "2025", table "Avlidna", row and column "Totalt" (recorded in scripts/sweden-gun-homicide.manual.json); archive on https://polisen.se/om-polisen/polisens-arbete/sprangningar-och-skjutningar/. Population: https://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/pxweb/sv/ssd/START__BE__BE0101__BE0101D/MedelfolkHandelse/ and https://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/pxweb/sv/ssd/START__BE__BE0101__BE0101D/MedelfolkHandelseCKM/.	2 of 5 checks Yes: Method and definitions published. Each yearly table states the definition of a confirmed shooting and that the counts are compiled manually. No: Official statistics or peer-reviewed. Operational figures the police compile on a government assignment; not part of Sweden's official statistics. Yes: Full count or representative sample. Counts every confirmed shooting reported anywhere in Sweden, not a sample. No: Raw data downloadable. Monthly counts by police region are published only as PDF tables; no data file. No: No known break or quality problem. The police say the figures are preliminary and can change afterwards; no final revised series is published.	22%

Gun homicide rate in Sweden, 2025, by source · per 100,000 people

Brå, Konstaterade fall av dödligt våld: fall med skjutvapen (Tabell 22)
Socialstyrelsen, Statistik om dödsorsaker: övergrepp med skjutvapen (X93-X95)
Polisen, Skjutningar per polisregion: avlidna

Show the data as a table

Year	Brå, Konstaterade fall av dödligt våld: fall med skjutvapen (Tabell 22)	Socialstyrelsen, Statistik om dödsorsaker: övergrepp med skjutvapen (X93-X95)	Polisen, Skjutningar per polisregion: avlidna
2012	0.18	0.17	–
2013	0.26	0.23	–
2014	0.29	0.26	–
2015	0.34	0.32	–
2016	0.3	0.26	–
2017	0.4	0.37	0.34
2018	0.42	0.39	0.42
2019	0.44	0.41	0.42
2020	0.46	0.45	0.45
2021	0.43	0.43	0.43
2022	0.6	0.56	0.59
2023	0.5	0.48	0.51
2024	0.43	0.4	0.42
2025	0.4	0.4	0.41

Why the numbers differ

The police count deaths in shootings they have confirmed as unlawful and not obviously accidental, by month of the shooting, and call the figures preliminary; Brå afterwards reviews every police report of lethal violence registered in the year, using the information available until mid-March of the next year, and counts a victim as shot when a licence-requiring firearm was the fatal method.
Socialstyrelsen codes the underlying cause of death from the death certificate and counts by date of death, for people registered as living in Sweden wherever they died; people not registered in Sweden who are killed here are left out, and deaths coded as shootings of undetermined intent are not assault.
Deaths that occur later in hospital: the death register puts a death in the year it happened, while Brå only counts cases registered as completed homicide when its review is done, so a shooting first recorded as attempted murder is missed if the victim dies after that; the police can change their preliminary monthly figures afterwards.
In the years all three exist (2017-2025) the counts differ by at most 6 deaths; the widest gap was in 2017 (police 34, Brå 40, death register 37). Calculated from the three yearly series in the chart. (source, retrieved 2026-10-26)
Brå's 2021 report "Dödligt skjutvapenvåld i Sverige och andra europeiska länder" (Rapport 2021:8, p. 8), comparing cause-of-death data for Sweden and 22 other European countries, puts Sweden at about 4 gun homicide deaths per million inhabitants (about 0.4 per 100,000) against a European average of about 1.6 per million; p. 38 says only Croatia was higher in 2014-2017 and that Sweden was highest in 2018 among the countries with data. (source, retrieved 2026-10-26)

Common mistakes

Counting only ICD-10 X93 (handgun) in the death register: most firearm assaults were coded X93 up to 2020 but X95 (other or unspecified firearm) from 2021, so X93 alone drops from 30 to 3 while X93-X95 together go from 47 to 45. (source, retrieved 2026-10-26)
Adding the police's injured people to the deaths, or using the number of shootings, as a count of people shot dead: the police tables report shootings, deaths and injuries separately. (source, retrieved 2026-10-26)

Context

Brå, "Dödligt skjutvapenvåld i Sverige och andra europeiska länder. En jämförande studie av nivåer, trender och våldsmetoder" (Rapport 2021:8, May 2021): compares levels and trends of lethal violence by firearm and other methods in Sweden and 22 European countries since 2000, mainly from cause-of-death data collected through Eurostat. Report page: https://bra.se/rapporter/arkiv/2021-05-26-dodligt-skjutvapenvald-i-sverige-och-andra-europeiska-lander Retrieved 2026-10-26.

Considered, not used

Socialstyrelsen statistics database (Statistikdatabas för dödsorsaker): Its finest assault category is X85-Y09 (assault by any method), so it cannot separate firearm deaths; the page uses Tabell 4A of each yearly report instead. (source, retrieved 2026-10-26)
WHO Mortality Database, Sweden: It republishes Socialstyrelsen's cause-of-death register, so it would not be an independent line. (source, retrieved 2026-10-26)
Police shooting statistics before 2017: The police started the national count of confirmed shootings in November 2016, so there is no earlier full year. (source, retrieved 2026-10-26)
Police figures for 2026: The year is not complete; the police page shows monthly figures for the current year only.

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Cite as: RealStats, “How many people are shot dead in Sweden?”, updated 2026-10-26, with the original sources listed on the page.

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How many people are shot dead in Sweden?

People shot dead in Sweden, 2025

Score breakdown

How much each source counts

Sources

Gun homicide rate in Sweden, 2025

Score breakdown

How much each source counts

Sources

Why the numbers differ

Common mistakes