The Finnish government has ruled on which refugee demographics it will include in its refugee resettlement quota for 2026 — as well as on how many places will be allocated to each grouping. Meanwhile, the government expects no more than 2,500 first asylum applications to be lodged in the course of the year.
Finland has an annual refugee resettlement acceptance quota of 500, which it splits among various populations according to current crises around the world.
For 2026, the Finnish government decided that it would allocate the same quota as it already had in 2024 and 2025:
The Nordic nation has agreed to receive 150 Afghan refugees who are currently in Iran; 120 Congolese refugees who are in Rwanda; 100 Syrian refugees from Turkey, and 50 Venezuelan refugees who have been living in Peru.
In addition, Finland said it would receive 30 refugees with various nationalities who had been evacuated from Libya to Rwanda, in addition to reserving a quota of 50 spots to resettle people of any nationality or from any region that might be undergoing a fresh emergency in the course of the year.
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Focus on vulnerable people
The Finnish interior ministry said that the selection of the quota of resettled refugees was "guided by interviews conducted during selection missions."
"In the selection, particular emphasis is placed on the most vulnerable groups."
Finland says that the government's asylum and resettlement policy is focused on helping the most vulnerable people in the world, while paying special attention to the plight of children, women, people with disabilities and any other individual who might be in a particularly vulnerable position in a refugee camp.
It added that in its assessments related to the allocation of the annual resettlement quota, the Finnish government also paid particular attention to ethic and cultural groups that were suffering persecution in their home countries.
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Asylum numbers also expected to remain low
The allocation of Finland's refugee resettlement quota is prepared each year by the Ministry of the Interior in close cooperation with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
The Finnish Immigration Service and the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service are also consulted, as is the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, which is the chief global body in charge of refugee resettlement.
In addition to accepting refugees for resettlement on a quota-basis, Finland is also continuing to process asylum claims of people who make their way to the northern EU member state without the help of international bodies like the UN.
The number of asylum seekers in Finland, however, has remained relatively low in recent years when compared to numbers from the so-called "refugee crisis" of 2015, when more than 32,000 asylum seekers arrived in the country.
The Finnish Immigration Service says it expects that in 2026, approximately 1,500 – 2,500 first asylum applications will be lodged.
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