Determination of citizenship
You can ask the Finnish Immigration Service to determine your citizenship status in the following cases:
- You want to know if you are a Finnish citizen.
- You want to know what citizenship you are considered to hold in Finland.
- You want to know if you are considered to be stateless in Finland.
- Your citizenship information is not correct in the Population Information System (you are a citizen of some other state than the one entered in the system).
- You want to determine the citizenship of a child in your custody.
‘Citizenship status’ means:
- your current and previous citizenship;
- statelessness;
- unknown citizenship.
Request determination of citizenship status by submitting an application: Request to determine citizenship status, KAN_9 (pdf).
If you want to or are asked to provide proof of the time periods you have been living in Finland, fill in the Form for providing evidence of residence in Finland, KAN_OLESKELU (pdf).
You can send the form to the Finnish Immigration Service by post or email, or you can bring it to one of our service points. For contact details, see the page Contact information.
Determining a child’s citizenship status
The Finnish Nationality Act was amended on 1 June 2003. The old Nationality Act is applied to children who were born before that date. See the page Finnish citizenship for a child for more information about passing down a parent's Finnish citizenship to a child.
Request by an authority
The authorities (the police, the Digital and Population Data Services Agency, a Finnish mission) may ask the Finnish Immigration Service to determine your citizenship status.
The authorities must request determination of a person’s citizenship status if there is a possibility that this information is incorrect or not up to date in the Population Information System. In such a case, citizenship status will be determined free of charge.
