Kratom is a narcotic in Sweden. Since 11 March 2025 the plant itself, Mitragyna speciosa, has been on Swedish narcotics list I, which makes possessing it, selling it, importing it and using it criminal offences. There is no lawful way to buy or use kratom in Sweden outside a narcotics licence, and those are issued only for medical or scientific purposes.
This is a recent change. Information published before March 2025, including a good deal of what still circulates online, describes a Sweden where kratom was openly for sale. That Sweden no longer exists.
The gap that was closed
For years Sweden was in an odd position. The active alkaloid mitragynine had long been classified as a narcotic, but the plant that contains it had not. Kratom leaf and powder were therefore sold openly, online and in physical shops, on the reasoning that the material was not itself a listed substance.
The government was blunt about what it thought of this. Announcing the decision, the Minister for Social Affairs, Jakob Forssmed, said it had been very unsatisfactory that kratom could be sold entirely unregulated in Sweden because of a hole in the legislation, and that the classification closed it.
Proposed, decided, in force
The three stages are worth keeping separate, because a reader can land on any one of them online and mistake it for the current position.
In January 2025 the Public Health Agency of Sweden, Folkhälsomyndigheten, proposed that the plant be classified as a narcotic. On 10 February 2025 the government decided to do so, through an amendment to the ordinance on control of narcotics (SFS 2025:77). The classification came into force on 11 March 2025, and on the same day the Medical Products Agency, Läkemedelsverket, updated its narcotics schedules so that Mitragyna speciosa (kratom) now appears in list I.
Annex 1 to the ordinance, which is the list SFS 2025:77 rewrote, has been rewritten five more times since: by SFS 2025:264, 2025:662, 2025:1314, 2026:340 and 2026:1109, the last in force from 14 July 2026. We read the consolidated annex as amended through the last of them. Mitragyna speciosa is still in it, in the paragraph that also covers khat and two psilocybin mushrooms, and mitragynine is still in the list of individual substances above it.
The derivatives, which Sweden reached first
Sweden did not stop at the plant, and this is the part a reader following the American story will want. Two further amendments to Läkemedelsverket’s schedules put kratom-derived compounds in Swedish list I:
- HSLF-FS 2025:73, in force 30 December 2025, added 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH-mitragynin) and mitragynine pseudoindoxyl (pseudoindoxylmitragynin).
- HSLF-FS 2026:26, in force 14 July 2026, added dihydro-7-hydroxymitragynine, which the schedule also names MGM-15, and 9F-dihydro-7-hydroxymitragynine, named MGM-16.
Three of those four are the compounds the United States Drug Enforcement Administration placed in Schedule I by temporary scheduling order on 26 August 2026: mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, MGM-15 and MGM-16. Sweden had controlled the first for roughly eight months by then, and the other two for six weeks. The fourth, 7-hydroxymitragynine itself, is controlled in Sweden and is not federally controlled in the United States, where it is the subject of a proposed rule that has not been finalised.
None of the four carries an international listing in the Swedish tables, so these are national decisions in both countries rather than a treaty obligation working through.
What narcotic status means
Once a substance is a narcotic, handling it without authorisation is an offence under the Narcotic Drugs Punishment Act, narkotikastrafflagen (1968:64). The Act reaches a person who unlawfully transfers, produces, acquires, possesses, uses, or otherwise deals with a narcotic. The ordinary penalty is imprisonment for up to three years. Minor offences, which is how personal use and small quantities are usually treated, carry a fine or up to six months.
Note that use is on that list. Sweden is one of a small number of countries that criminalise the consumption of a narcotic in itself, not only its supply or possession. A person who uses kratom in Sweden now commits a drug offence by the act of using it.
Import and export are dealt with under the separate smuggling law. In practice this means the customs service, Tullverket, can stop kratom at the border, which the government identified as one of the immediate effects of the change.
Handling kratom lawfully now requires a narcotics licence from Läkemedelsverket. Those are granted only for medical, scientific or otherwise specially beneficial purposes, which does not include selling it to the public or using it recreationally.
What this means in practice
Buying, possessing or using kratom in Sweden is a criminal matter, as of 11 March 2025.
Ordering it from a Dutch, German or other foreign webshop is importing a narcotic. The package can be seized at the border, and the import is an offence regardless of the fact that the seller acted lawfully in the country of dispatch.
Anyone reading that kratom is legal in Sweden is reading something that was true before 11 March 2025 and is not true now. The date is the whole of the point, and it is why this page carries a verification date at the top.