After a late neck-and-neck campaign resulted in one of the closest election results in the country’s history, Sweden’s centre-left parties have secured a narrow parliamentary majority: They won 176 seats, vs the 173 won by the centre-right parties (who were previously in power). Translating those numbers into a functioning coalition government could take months. While the Social Democrats, Centre Party, Left Party, and Green Party largely agree on development policy, there’s considerably less consensus on other policies and government roles. Whether they can find a compromise will determine whether they form Sweden’s next government.
If they succeed, Sweden’s development policy could change direction decisively. The four parties broadly support gradually restoring Sweden’s commitment to spend 1 percent of gross national income (GNI) on official development assistance (ODA), refocusing aid on poverty and fragility, and moving away from conditionality mechanisms between aid and migration management and export promotion.
That would represent a big shift after the last four years in which Sweden restructured and reduced its aid significantly. But restoring Sweden’s global development leadership will require more than reversing budget cuts. A new government would need to decide what kind of development actor Sweden wants to be in a world which has changed considerably since the Social Democrats were last in charge. In this blog, we look back at Sweden’s aid policy shift over the past four years, explore where the potential coalition partners align, and consider the choices and challenges facing the next government.
From development leader to pioneering aid cuts
Sweden entered the previous parliamentary term in 2022 as a development leader. It had met or exceeded the 1 percent aid target for decades, was a major supporter of multilateral institutions and civil society, and consistently ranked among the countries most committed to policies that benefit people beyond their borders.
Following the 2022 election, we wondered whether the result meant the end of an aid superpower. The Kristersson government abandoned the 1 percent of GNI/ODA target, replacing it with a fixed multi-year budget. It argued that this would make funding more predictable and improve planning. The government also promised a sharper geographical and thematic focus, fewer fragmented strategies, and a stronger focus on results. Previously, Swedish aid had been dispersed across a large number of countries, themes, strategies, and implementing channels. Simplifying the system and setting fewer, clearer priorities were legitimate ambitions.
The reform agenda was accompanied by a more fundamental shift. Aid was cut and increasingly linked to domestic interests, including migration management and trade promotion. Support to Ukraine—both essential and strongly supported across the political spectrum—came increasingly from within a shrinking development budget. Funding was redirected away from several long-standing bilateral partnerships and from some of the poorest and most fragile countries in support of Ukraine. Over the past four years, support to 13 partner countries has been phased out, ten of which are classified as least developed or as fragile countries in conflict.
Meanwhile, Sweden’s broader approach to global development also weakened. The Policy for Global Development, which sought to make climate, migration, trade, security, and other domestic policies consistent with global development, was abolished in 2025, partly on the grounds that the Sustainable Development Goals had superseded it. Yet the Swedish National Audit Office subsequently found that government direction and follow-up of the 2030 Agenda had been weak, responsibility for policy coherence unclear, and Sweden’s level of ambition reduced.
In other words, the last four years changed not only how much Sweden spent and through which channels, but also the purpose and place of development within its wider foreign policy.
What did parties say about their development priorities?
A survey of the Swedish party positions conducted by Diakonia, a development organisation, before the elections found broad support across all parties for human rights, international law, gender equality, and international cooperation. The sharper dividing lines among parties concerned the size of the aid budget, whether support to Ukraine should be financed separately, and the purpose of aid.
The Centre Party, Green Party, and Left Party, the three minority parties in a potential centre-left government, committed to reaching 1 percent of GNI during the parliamentary term. The Social Democrats supported a gradual return to 1 percent but stopped short of promising to reach it within the next four years. All four potential governing parties say aid should prioritise people in the poorest and most fragile countries. They also oppose tying aid to Swedish migration objectives or export promotion. The Centre Party and Left Party favour financing support to Ukraine outside the ordinary aid budget, while the Green Party’s preference has been to increase the overall aid envelope enough to avoid a trade-off. The Social Democrats have so far not supported a separate mechanism, though they do insist that Sweden must both support Ukraine and continue addressing poverty and hunger elsewhere.
Three key issues for a potential centre-left government
The first test will be whether political commitments survive the budget negotiations. How would a return to spending 1 percent of GNI on ODA be put into practice? The purpose of a quantitative aid target is to provide a credible and predictable budget, particularly when long-term partnerships and multilateral institutions are being threatened by cuts from other donors. But volume must be accompanied by quality. A return to 1 percent should therefore come with a renewed emphasis on development effectiveness, country ownership, evidence, transparency, and a focus on the poorest.
The second issue will be whether Sweden can support Ukraine without placing the financial burden on the poorest countries. The emerging government parties have several options: a separate budget reserved for Ukraine; a substantially larger overall aid budget; or clearer rules distinguishing aid for poverty reduction from aid spent serving primarily Swedish interests. A related question is whether a new government would reshape the geographical profile of Swedish aid, by giving higher priority to least developed and countries in conflict.
The third issue will be whether Sweden restores a genuinely global approach to policymaking beyond aid. Aid alone cannot offset the effects of harmful policies on climate emissions, migration, trade, arms exports, tax, technology, or international finance. All four potential coalition partners have expressed increased ambitions for policy coherence beyond aid in their manifestos, but it remains to be seen how far these ambitions will be translated into clear policies.
An opportunity to lead
A centre-left government would assume power at a difficult moment in global development. Aid cuts by many traditional donors—paired with rising humanitarian needs, low growth and severe debt levels in many low-income countries—come at a time when the rules guiding international cooperation are being applied selectively. Self-interest and transactional approaches to development cooperation are shaping policy not only in the United States, but across Europe.
Sweden alone cannot make up for the loss of support or funding by larger donors. It can, however, choose to lead against the current: defending international law consistently, providing predictable finance, supporting multilateral institutions, investing in prevention, and building partnerships based on mutual interests, rather than short-term transactions.
The incoming government should not seek to recreate Swedish development policy of the past. The world has changed, and development policy needs to adapt to it. Instead, it must retain useful elements of the previous government’s reform agenda—greater focus, simplicity, and a commitment to budgetary predictability—while restoring some of the core principles that made Sweden a development leader: a focus on poverty and fragility, respect for development effectiveness, strong civil-society and multilateral partnerships, and policy coherence beyond aid.
