Deadline: 23-Oct-2025
The Swedish Arts Council offers grants to support the international dissemination of high-quality Swedish literature and Swedish Drama for promoting international exchanges in these areas.
The grants can be applied for by legal persons who conduct or organise professional literary activities, including publishers, festivals, embassies, associations, or other organisations. Legal person is a legal term for an association that has its own legal capacity, i.e. can acquire rights and assume obligations. A legal person can enter into agreements, own assets, and incur liabilities, and can act as a party in court proceedings.
Eligible costs for the grant include travel and accommodation costs, fees, marketing costs, and other expenses in connection with the event or project, such as translation costs. Grants may also cover costs for information campaigns aimed at promoting Swedish literature internationally. The grant applies to the translation of prose fiction, poetry, picture books, comics and graphic novels for adults, children, and young adults; non-fiction in the area of general culture; essays; and drama for publication in book form. The support scheme does not apply to the translation of specialised scholarly works, reference books, study materials, textbooks, Festschrifts, homage volumes, publishing of sheet music, yearbooks, books of local interest, exhibition catalogues, hobby books, craft books, handbooks, cookbooks, and travel guides.
Applicants may request grants for translation costs and/or production costs. A maximum of SEK 20,000 can be granted as production support. Production grants may be awarded for four-colour illustrated books or for books that are particularly costly to publish in translation for other reasons, including poetry, comics, and graphic novels. The grant cannot cover copyright costs.
Applications must include a scanned copy of the signed contract between the publishing house and the rights holder, a scanned copy of the signed contract between the publishing house and the translator, a PDF, Word file, or e-book of the original book (for anthologies, scanned copies of the complete included material must be enclosed), a translator’s list of translations from Swedish, and a copy of the application form. The form may be updated, and the copy should not be mailed.
All applications received during each application period are evaluated simultaneously by an external expert committee, which assesses the literary quality of each work, including its narrative structure, linguistic and artistic expression, and ability to engage the reader regardless of genre. When the amount applied for exceeds the available funds for the application round, the assessment team applies the priorities established by the Swedish Arts Council. These include the age of the work, prioritising contemporary literature and drama while still allowing support for older works; language, prioritising introduction of authorship in countries where it has not previously been widespread; economy, giving priority to applications where compensation is paid to participants to support good conditions for artistic creation; and diversity, ensuring that the grant supports dissemination of a broad range of Swedish literature and drama with respect to genres, countries, languages, and authorship.
The Director of the International Cooperation Division at the Swedish Arts Council makes the final decision on grant distribution approximately eight weeks after each application deadline. Decisions will be communicated via e-mail to the applicant, translator, and rights holder, and a list of allocated grants will be published on the Swedish Literature website. Decisions are final and cannot be appealed.
For more information, visit the Swedish Arts Council.