Sweden vacations 2024 & 2025

Sweden’s historic cities, thousands of islands, and Arctic landscape offer a host of experiences from sailing and dog-sledding to fine food and world-renowned museums. You could get an insight into the neo-Nordic culinary scene on a food-themed walking tour, visit castles, palaces, and runestones on a trip to Sigtuna and Uppsala, or sail around archipelagos to see fishing villages, summer houses, and seabirds.

In the north, you could spend a day with the Indigenous Sámi to learn about their way of life, their reindeer herds, and how to lasso like a local. You could hike the northern forests under the midnight sun, or kayak on the Lule River to get into the Arctic wilderness.

In winter, Sweden offers a whole different set of experiences from dog sledding and winter sports to the chance to stay in an ice hotel or watch the northern lights ripple across the night sky.

In style-conscious Sweden you can stay in cutting-edge concept hotels, historic buildings with contemporary interiors, boutique guesthouses, and classically elegant urban hideaways. For example, you could stay in a stylish Art Nouveau boutique hotel set in a former girls’ school, enjoy the charm of Gothenburg’s historic post office, now a sleek urban hotel, or opt for a futuristic treehouse in the forests of Lapland. For more ideas, browse our collection of places to stay in Sweden.

Sweden is a large country, but most visitors choose to visit Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, and Lapland. In stylish Stockholm, you’ll find a cosmopolitan capital where cobbled lanes are flanked by brightly painted 17th- and 18th-century buildings but also avant-garde architecture, world-class museums, and a cutting-edge restaurant scene.

Hip Gothenburg’s large student population gives it a lively energy and it has a thriving coffeehouse culture as well as a vast collection of art at the Konstmuseum, which covers everything from the Scandinavian masters to the French impressionists, and contemporary photography. Gothenburg is also the gateway to the Bohuslän archipelago and its 8,000 islands.

Malmö also has a well-preserved old town thick with Dutch-Renaissance-style gabled townhouses while the redeveloped waterfront is home to the towering Turning Torso, Scandinavia’s highest building. In the boreal forests of Lapland you can get an insight into Sámi culture or experience the midnight sun.

It takes around eight hours to fly from the East Coast of the US to Sweden, and around 12 and a half hours from the West Coast.

The time zone in Sweden is UTC+1 hour. Daylight Savings Time is observed from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October.

The best way to get around in Sweden is by road, rail, and air. Sweden is a large country with many islands, and you might need to combine road trips with rail journeys or internal flights to cover larger distances, and then take boat trips or cruises along the coast to see the islands. If you’d prefer not to drive yourself, we can also arrange for a private vehicle with a driver-guide to take you between destinations.

US citizens don’t need a visa to travel to Sweden. However, any time spent in Sweden is counted towards your 90-day limit for travel in the Schengen area.

Your doctor is best placed to provide you with immunization advice for Sweden, but you should also ensure you’re up to date with routine vaccinations at home. You can also check the recommended vaccinations by visiting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.

Check that your passport will be valid for a minimum of three months beyond your date of departure from Sweden and has at least two blank pages.