Anyone who wants to become a naturalised Dane must pass the country’s citizenship test. How hard is the test and how many people pass it?
If you want to become a Danish citizen, you have to prove your knowledge of the country’s culture, history, politics and more by taking a citizenship test (indfødsretsprøve).
The test takes place twice annually, usually in May and November. It consists of 45 questions including 35 based on learning materials which candidates can revise beforehand.
In November 2021, the previous version of the citizenship test, which consisted of 40 multiple choice questions, was supplemented with new questions about “Danish values” such as equality, freedom of speech and the relation between legislation and religion.
The final 10 questions of the test in its current form cover the ‘Danish values’ topics and are not covered by the learning material.
The pass mark is 36/45 and at least four of the five Danish values questions must be answered correctly.
READ ALSO: What are the questions like on Denmark’s citizenship test?
Data on the tests, including the percentage of entrants who passed and the total number of people who passed, is generally published by the Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI) shortly after the tests have taken place.
A look through past archives of this data, available on SIRI’s website, shows the pass rate for the test going back to 2017, albeit with a couple of test cycles missing.
Plotting the percentages in a graph, it becomes clear that there’s a fluctuating pass rate around the 50 percent mark, but with a couple of notable quirks.
A clear drop in the pass rate can be observed in November 2021, the first test cycle in which the additional “Danish values” questions were introduced.
In fact, the three highest pass rates of 65, 60 and 66 percent all came in the three tests immediately prior to the addition of the new questions in late 2021.
Following this, the pass rate gradually recovers and was approaching 60 percent again by 2025. However, the November 2023 test saw a large drop in people passing to 36 percent before the rate immediately jumped back up to 52 percent.
In its press release publishing the November 2023 results, no comment was made by SIRI on this apparent drop in performance. While some of the press releases on citizenship tests contain comments from the immigration minister who was in post at the time, this was not the case in either November 2021 or November 2023.
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