Note: 1 USD is approximately 10 SEK
The cuts made to Sida’s budget for the year of 2026 are the most extensive made by the Swedish government these past years. The cuts follow a trend of reallocations of resources from low income countries and fragile states, to cooperation in Ukraine and the European neighbourhood. Despite the multiple crises globally, no additional funding is planned. Instead, the Swedish government has decreased its aid budget by 3 billion SEK from the year 2025 to 2026.
The detailed aid budget for 2026 is a continuation of overall trends seen in the last few years, including:
- Resources being reallocated from the rest of the world to Ukraine
- Resources being reallocated from Sida to the department of foreign affairs/ Swedish government, with a 20% decrease in Sidas budget compared to 2025.
- The funding to certain UN bodies has either been phased out or very decreased, whilst others remain unchanged.
Cuts to Sida’s geographical development assistance strategies funding the past five years (2021-2026)
| Decrease (%) | Decrease (MSEK) | |
| AFRICA | -57 | -4422 |
| ASIA | -63 | -1082 |
| MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA | -58 | -814 |
| LATIN AMERICA | -41 | -243,5 |
| Total | -57 | -6562 |
Areas protected from budget cuts
On the 19th of December this year, the Swedish minister of aid and foreign trade, Benjamin Dousa, stated that the purpose of the extensive Sida budget cuts was to enable a further increased support for Ukraine. This would result in a fifth (10,6 billion SEK) of the Swedish aid budget in 2026 to be allocated towards Ukraine. He also explained that certain thematic areas and UN agencies were protected from cuts. The letter of appropriation also states that the civil society strategy budget remains unchanged.
Other protected areas include the thematic budget line for human rights and democracy, Sida’s humanitarian assistance, the strategy for global health and SRHR, the regional strategy for SRHR in Africa, and support to certain UN agencies including UNHCR, UNFPA, UNICEF and WFP as well as global health initiatives. Regarding the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, funding remains unchanged from the 2025 budget, but the government had already reduced this support the previous year, below Sweden’s previous financing pledge. Sweden has still not made its new three-year commitment to the Global Fund, and if the level is to be maintained the annual contribution will need to be set higher than in the 2026 budget.
Although funding for the above budget lines remain the same between 2025 and 2026, the severe cuts to other budget lines mean that several thematic areas the Swedish government claims to protect, such as SRHR and human rights and democracy, still receive less overall support from Sweden. This coincides with declining international aid from several other major donor countries.
Objectives
The overarching goal of Swedish aid, which is to enable people living in poverty and oppression to improve their living conditions, remains unchanged. A new addition compared to last year is the statement that aid is also one of the most important foreign policy tools for promoting and safeguarding Swedish interests and addressing the challenges facing Sweden and the world. Nothing is said about how potential goal-conflicts should be handled, and there is no reference to Agenda 2030, nor policy coherence for sustainable development.
Civil society in Swedish development cooperation
Support to the civil society strategy remains unchanged at 1.8 billion SEK. As last year, at least 100 million SEK is earmarked for activities in Ukraine. Sida is also instructed, as one of four measures to promote greater efficiency in aid, to work to increase the share of aid channelled through civil society.
Today, 95 percent of Sweden’s support to civil society is provided through Sida and the remaining five percent through the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. This may create a challenge for Sida to increase the share of total aid to civil society, since Sida’s budget is being reduced by one fifth whilst the Ministry’s budget lines are increasing by the same proportion. In particular, budget line 33: Strategic contributions is increased to 5.8 billion SEK, the highest amount ever allocated for this purpose. Historically this budget line has contained only a very small share of support to civil society compared with other expenditures.
The letter of appropriation contains several references to the Swedish resource base, and civil society organisations are mentioned as part of this, alongside other private actors. Examples include that the Swedish resource base should be utilised within both development cooperation and humanitarian assistance, in cooperation in Ukraine, and in mobilising catalytic financing within the seven thematic priorities of the Swedish government’s “reform agenda”.
A problematic formulation in the letter of appropriation concerns further increased control to ensure that recipients of aid are not actors who support violent extremism including “Islamism, antisemitism, terrorism or hate propaganda directed at individuals or groups”. In previous extensive reviews, primarily of civil society organisations, Sweden has found no evidence of violent extremism among recipients of Swedish funding.
Country and regional strategies
Aid to four countries in Africa, namely Mozambique, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Liberia, and cooperation with Bolivia will be phased out by the end of August 2026, as announced by the government at a press conference in early December 2025.
Ten cooperation strategies that expired in 2025, or earlier, have not been renewed but extended by six months to 30 June 2026. This applies to all remaining strategies in Latin America and Asia and the following country strategies in Africa: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia and Sudan. The strategies for Somalia and Sudan have lacked a long term framework for the longest period, as they expired in 2022 and have been extended in short intervals since then.
| Budget 2025 | Budget 2026 | 2025-2026 Decrease (%) | |
| AFRICA | 5150 | 3310 | -36 |
| ASIA | 1150 | 644 | -44 |
| MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA | 870 | 600 | -31 |
| LATIN AMERICA | 480 | 354,5 | -26 |
| Total | 7650 | 4908,5 | -36 |
UN agencies and other multilateral organisations
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and two of the smaller climate funds were the most affected by the cuts made to multilateral core support for 2026, when compared with the previous year. UNDP’s funding is reduced by 92 percent, and funding to the Adaptation Fund and the Least Developed Countries Fund is removed entirely. They share the same fate as several other important UN agencies and funds to which Sweden has reduced or ended its support in previous years, including UNRWA, UNAIDS and the Joint Fund for Agenda 2030. Humanitarian and emergency core support through the UN was also heavily reduced last year and remains at the same low level.
The overall budget for multilateral and international organisations and funds is 9.1 billion SEK for 2026, of which 7.9 billion is allocated in the letter of appropriation. 1.2 billion remains for the government to allocate during the year. Funding for multilateral development banks remains unchanged at 4.5 billion SEK.
Strategic contributions
This budget line covers bilateral Swedish aid allocated by government decision and administered directly by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. In the 2026 letter of appropriation, it is higher than ever before at 5.8 billion SEK.
From this budget line the government can make decisions throughout the budget year, and in recent years, the majority of the funds have gone to Ukraine. This has happened either through direct decisions on disbursements or through reallocations to Sida’s strategy for Ukraine.
Climate aid
The government is ending support to two climate funds: the Adaptation Fund and the Least Developed Countries Fund. These funds support climate adaptation in particularly vulnerable countries who already are severely affected by the climate crisis. Sweden has provided annual contributions of 130-230 million SEK to these funds since 2016.
Support to the two larger climate funds, the Green Climate Fund and the Global Environment Facility, remains roughly the same as in 2025. Sweden has previously made multi year pledges to these funds which are paid out over many years. This year’s amount for the Green Climate Fund is lower than expected based on earlier disbursement plans.
At COP29 Sweden pledged to give 200 million SEK to the Loss and Damage Fund. Payments began in 2025 with 50 million SEK and now 75 million SEK for 2026. In total, support to climate funds decreases by 245 million SEK in 2026 when compared to 2025.
Sida, which has been responsible for a large share of the increase in climate aid over the past two years, is no longer tasked in the letter of appropriation with expanding its climate related assistance. The previous objective of contributing to expanded and more efficient climate aid, in line with the reform agenda, has now been replaced by a reporting requirement focused on efficient climate aid and a green global transition.
This shift takes place at the same time as the thematic strategy for sustainable growth and green transition is significantly reduced in 2026. If we subtract the earmarked amounts for education (159 million SEK), gender equality (200 million SEK), and health and SRHR (680 million SEK) from the budget allocation for Sustainable development, only 765 million SEK remain for sustainable growth and green transition. This shows a reduction of 1 330 million SEK in thematic support for economic and environmental sustainability compared to the previous parliamentary term in 2021.
Reporting requirements and government assignments to Sida
As in last year’s letter of appropriation, the degree of detailed instructions is high. Last year’s letter contained a total of 29 subheadings on assignments and reporting requirements. This year the number remains high at 31 subheadings. Several issues receive significant attention in the letter regarding Sida’s reporting to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs
• The influence of migration policy on aid and the use of conditional aid
• Synergies with trade policy
• Efficiency, results orientation, transparency, and strengthened work with evidence-based management
• Flexibility for Swedish interests, project orientation within Team Sweden, openness to changes in country focus, and more short-term agreements and smaller interventions
The last two points risk coming into conflict in the implementation of Sweden’s development cooperation, since there is very little evidence that short term approaches, smaller and shorter agreements, and a focus on upper middle-income countries improve aid effectiveness.
Several of this year’s assignments focus on Sida’s governance and results reporting. These include requirements for Sida to report how the agency develops and strengthens evidence-based approaches in the implementation of aid, to further develop results reporting, to expand anti-corruption reporting, and to safeguard the independence and integrity of evaluation activities in both prioritisation and implementation.
Democracy and human rights
The budget line for human rights, democracy and the rule of law is not affected by the cuts that impact many other parts of the budget. This budget line contains two strategies, the thematic strategy for promoting freedom and combating oppression, and the strategy for democracy support through Swedish party affiliated organisations. The total budget increases slightly to 1 105 million SEK. Another increase from last year is the amount allocated towards party-affiliated development organisations, who have been granted 4 million SEK each for activities in Ukraine.
Gender equality
The government’s description of gender equality as a core value in Swedish foreign and development policy is not reflected in any noticeable way in the letter of appropriation. For 2026, Sida receives no new assignment related to gender equality in development cooperation. A reporting assignment linked to the Women, Peace and Security action plan is already ongoing. Core support to UN Women and UNFPA remains at the same level as in 2024 and 2025.
Peace
The reduction of the budget for the thematic strategy for peace continues, and is now down to 89 million SEK, which is one fifth of the budget Sweden allocated in 2021. Support to the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund and other smaller peacebuilding core contributions also continue to decline. The Peacebuilding Fund receives 30 million SEK in 2026, which corresponds to 12 percent of the support it received in 2021.
Research and capacity development
The allocation for research cooperation is, yet again, significantly reduced to 246 million SEK. This means that this allocation for development research has decreased by 73 percent over the past five years. Resources for innovation and capacity development in development issues also shrink to 252 million SEK.
Trade and export promotion
Regarding synergies between aid and trade, the Swedish government wants Sida to report how it has contributed to Team Sweden efforts in strategic projects in low- and middle-income countries, to support in Ukraine, to Swedish influence in multilateral procurement processes, as well as projects within the European Union’s Global Gateway initiative.
Sida must also report how it has strengthened private investment, promoted effective and transparent tax systems, trade and the role of the private sector in line with the new global framework for development finance known as the Sevilla Commitment. In addition, Sida must consider socioeconomic total costs and cybersecurity in decisions on support for digitalisation and digital infrastructure as well as democratic digital development. Sida must also report on progress in implementing the promotional and communication concept ‘Made with Sweden’, although the letter of appropriation does not clearly define Sida’s role in this concept.
Migration
Sida has been given an assignment in the letter of appropriation to support the government in implementing an incentives-based approach to ensure synergies between migration and development cooperation. The term incentives-based approach is new in this year’s letter of appropriation and refers to a transactional view of aid resources as a tool to encourage or discourage behaviour in line with donor migration policy objectives.
A new assignment in this year’s letter is to analyse approaches to aid conditionality for migration policy purposes. Sida is instructed to develop methods that enable the implementation of development aid that is conditioned for countries cooperating more effectively with Sweden on migration issues. The assignment must be reported to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs by 30 April 2026.
New and strengthened formulations in the letter also state that “Sida must continuously take into account the priorities and assessments of the Government Offices and that synergies must be promoted with migration related projects within the Government Offices”.
As in last year’s letter of appropriation, emphasis is put on increasing the focus on migration within development cooperation. The stated purpose of this increased focus is to “safeguard the Swedish interest in countering irregular migration and its risks and to promote returns, voluntary repatriation and sustainable reintegration”. A fundamental problem with this formulation is that it mixes interventions that fall far outside the internationally agreed definition of development aid with other types of interventions that clearly belong within development cooperation, such as reducing risks for people who are displaced or other migrants. Read more about this topic here (in Swedish): https://concord.se/det-kan-inte-kallas-bistand-analys-av-migrationsstrategin