Marriage in Finland

Marriage can be entered into by anyone who:

• is at least 18 years old
• is not already married or in a registered partnership.

Marriages between two persons of the same sex are also allowed in Finland.

According to Finnish law, close relatives are not allowed to get married.

Marriage is always a voluntary choice, and no one can be pressured or forced into it. For example, parents are not allowed to pressure or force their child into marriage. Forcing someone to marry is a crime in Finland.

In Finland, women and men decide for themselves as to who they marry. They are not required to ask for permission, for example, from relatives.

More information on marriage in Finland is available on the InfoFinland page Getting married in Finland, a check list.

If your spouse lives permanently in Finland, you may be eligible to receive a residence permit in Finland based on marriage. However, a marriage does not guarantee a residence permit. Read more on the InfoFinland page Residence permit for a spouse.

Finnish citizenship cannot be gained through marriage.

A marriage entered into abroad is not official in Finland until it has been registered in the Finnish Population Information System. For the registration, you have to submit your original and legalised certificate of marriage to the Digital and Population Data Services Agency. Certificates provided by an authority of a Nordic or EU country do not need to be legalised.

If the certificate is not in Finnish, English or Swedish, it must be translated into one of these languages and the translation must also be legalised. If the translation is done by a translator authorised in Finland, the translation does not need to be legalised. If the certificate has been provided by an authority of an EU country and is supplemented with the form EU 2016/1191, the certificate does not need to be translated.