The Swedish Bible Society has released NT 2026, the first new Swedish translation of the New Testament since 1981. The Church of Sweden plans to give away 200,000 copies to worshippers on the first Sunday of Advent. Archbishop Martin Modéus unveiled the translation at the Gothenburg Book Fair on Thursday, 24 September, the TT news agency reported.

The timing's no accident. The launch came 500 years after Sweden's first New Testament, finished at the royal press in Stockholm in August 1526, when Swedish started taking the place in church that Latin had held.

Launched at the book fair

The Bible Society's own schedule put the launch at 11am on the stage in the fair's K-foyer, with a concert in Gothenburg Cathedral that evening. That was the first moment the text could be made public. Bibles went on sale the same day, and the translation went live in digital services, including the society's reading site, bibeln.se.

Photo: ArildV / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0), cropped

TT's report, carried by TV4, said Modéus unveiled the new text at the fair. It also said the Church of Sweden would hand out 200,000 copies at services on the first Sunday of Advent, which falls on 29 November this year.

The giveaway was the archbishop's idea, and the dioceses are paying for it. The Diocese of Gothenburg says it's covering about 20,000 copies for its parishes, shared out according to how many people came to church on Advent Sunday over the past two years. Parishes don't have to order or pay for books or freight. "What the parishes need to do is organise the handout on the first Sunday of Advent," the diocese wrote (our translation). It suggested tying the gift to invitations to study groups and other events.

Judas, and a closer reading of the Greek

The translators went back to the oldest manuscripts they could get, Dagens Nyheter reported. They also tried to translate the same Greek word the same way every time it turns up.

That's led to one change people are already talking about. Judas no longer "betrays" Jesus. In NT 2026 he "hands over" Jesus, just like Pontius Pilate does, because the Greek uses the same verb for both men. Now the Swedish does too.

The society says the goal was a "centre translation", one text that can do lots of jobs at once, from personal reading to teaching and worship, across different churches. Its board set the brief on 3 May 2021. The guiding ideal was what it calls "moderate functional equivalence". Key terms and ideas in the Greek are translated as consistently as possible, while sentence structure and imagery are shaped into natural Swedish. Put simply, the society says, it sits "a little closer to the Greek" than earlier Swedish versions.

Footnotes point out alternative readings and translation choices wherever the text is open to more than one reasonable interpretation. The society says inclusive wording is used where it doesn't distort the historical or theological meaning, and that those choices were made with care.

Five years, many readers

The text went through five levels of editing before the board adopted it on 10 November 2025. Publishers who'd signed agreements got it on 1 December 2025, under a confidentiality clause that held until the book fair.

Eight primary translators did the first versions: Lisa Buratti, Jonas Holmstrand, Linda Joelsson, Dan Nässelqvist, Bim O'Reilly, Rikard Roitto, Mikael Tellbe and Mikael Winninge. An editorial committee reworked every passage. Winninge chaired it from 2021 to 2025, and Tellbe has chaired it since. Outside consultants helped with specialist questions.

Ordinary readers had a say, too. Sample texts were published for comment, and about 20 reference groups of different ages and backgrounds tested them to see if they were clear. The society says hundreds of Bible readers sent in responses by email along the way.

The society has posted a short lecture by Winninge on its YouTube channel. He explains the principles behind the translation with examples from the text, and the society says parishes can use it as a short training session.

Six publishers are bringing out editions alongside the society's own: Argument, Libris, Marcus, Sjöbergs, Verbum and XP Media. An audio recording is being discussed, and the society says it's likely to come soon.

Not a replacement, yet

NT 2026 isn't automatically taking over from Bibel 2000, the Swedish Bible whose New Testament dates from 1981. "NT 2026 is intended to be a strong, modern alternative but not necessarily an immediate replacement," the society says (our translation). Churches with formal rules on which texts can be read in worship will decide in their own time, and the Church of Sweden has set out its process.

There's no decision yet on a new translation of the Old Testament either. The society calls it "a living question" and says the way NT 2026 is received will help settle it.

For now, the society is betting on getting people reading. It's launching a new introductory course, Discover the Bible (Upptäck Bibeln), this autumn. It's the same kind of small-group approach that's been drawing newcomers to the Alpha course in parishes this season.

A season of launches

The book fair was only the start. The society has lined up launch weekends across Sweden and in Finland, where Swedish is also an official language. There's Uppsala from 8 to 11 October, Jönköping from 16 to 18 October, the Helsinki Book Fair from 22 to 25 October, Malmö and Lund from 5 to 9 November, Bible days in the north at Älvsby and Luleå from 12 to 15 November, and Hanaholmen in Finland from 15 to 18 November. The full release calendar also lists dozens of smaller events, from an ecumenical Bible reading in Uppsala's Forumtorget to a Bible marathon at a Pentecostal church in Botkyrka.

The 500th anniversary of the 1526 New Testament was marked back in August, with an official celebration on 15 August and an exhibition at Uppsala University Library's Carolina Rediviva.

So why do a new version at all? The society keeps its answer short. "Language changes and research on the Greek texts develops continuously," it says (our translation). A new translation, it says, brings together current scholarship and clear, modern Swedish, so the texts are easy to get into and mean something to today's readers.