A total of 6,255 people were granted Danish citizenship in 2024 according to recently released data from Statistics Denmark.
The number is broadly in line with trends in recent years but is substantially higher than the figure for 2023, which is 3,355 new citizenships.
Meanwhile, the country has a longstanding policy of increasing citizenship requirements. That includes a 2021 change to the citizenship law which saw several rules tightened.
The same year, the previous version of the citizenship test, which consisted of 40 multiple choice questions, was supplemented with five extra questions about “Danish values” such as equality, freedom of speech and the relation between legislation and religion.
Parliament is also expected in the coming weeks to enact a bill bringing in a 50 percent increase to the cost of applying for citizenship, and the government is considering screening the personal views’ of prospective citizens.
So how many of last year’s 6,255 new Danish citizens are from countries which have English as an official language, and are these countries trending up or down in the data?
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United Kingdom
The number of British nationals granted Danish citizenship began increasing after 2015, the year Denmark passed a new law permitting dual citizenship for the first time. The most dramatic increase is seen in 2020. This is unlikely to be a coincidence as this was the year Britons lost their EU citizens' rights due to Brexit, giving those who were eligible for Danish naturalisation a huge incentive to apply. The figure has since stabilised -- though it increased in 2024 -- but remains far higher than it was prior to Brexit.
Ireland
The number of people from Ireland granted Danish citizenship is a fraction of that for the UK. This seems logical given Ireland's status as an EU member state -- giving the Irish passport similar benefits to the Danish one -- alongside the lower number of Irish people living in Denmark.
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Australia
Like the UK post-2020, Australians can benefit from EU membership if they become Danish citizens. The raw numbers are more comparable to Ireland, but unlike the first two countries, there appears to be a downward trend after 2021, the year in which a major tightening of citizenship rules was enacted.
South Africa
The numbers for South Africa are too small to discern any particular trend. Three years -- 2016, 2020 and 2024 -- saw 20 or more citizenships awarded.
Canada
As with the UK and Ireland, 2020 was the peak year for Danish naturalisation for people from Canada. While this is not statistical proof of a trend, it suggests the 2021 law change may have slowed down or reduced the number of citizenships being granted.
United States
The United States provided more new Anglophone citizens to Denmark than any other country in 2016 and 2017 before its numbers were eclipsed by the United Kingdom in the wake of Brexit. The US also follows the pattern of seeing its number of new Danish nationals peak in 2020.
Editor's note: Other countries in which English is a dominant language, such as New Zealand and Zimbabwe, were not included in this article due to very low numbers in the data bank.
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