At the end of 2025, Sweden had 459 open investigations into firearm homicides, according to police statistics. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the largest region, Stockholm, has the most open cases, followed by the South.
The sharp increase began after 2013. At that time, there were 95 open cases of firearm homicide.
"It is a compilation of an incredibly problematic development," says Jarl Holmström, deputy regional police chief in Police Region South, about the figures.
According to Tobias Bergkvist, deputy regional police chief in Stockholm, this shows that at the start there was no capacity to handle the explosive rise in gun violence.
Stockholm had a clearance rate of about 20 percent, so many cases remained open during that period.
Partial convictions
He points out that investigations that are still open may have led to partial convictions, such as accessory to murder or aggravated weapons offences. There may also be murder convictions in some cases, where the search for instigators or other accomplices is still ongoing.
Murders are not subject to the statute of limitations and the police continue to work to solve unsolved shootings, including in the cold case groups. Technological breakthroughs can provide openings, and people who previously kept quiet can start talking for various reasons, says Jarl Holmström.
"We are constantly scanning. It could be that someone dies who we believe played an important role in a criminal constellation, and then it could suddenly mean that someone is willing to talk."
Operations Center
The large increase in gun violence first came to the South and West regions and that is where new methods began to be developed. In the South, a regional operations center was developed to serve as a connecting link between competencies to be able to share information and detect and act in a faster and more powerful way. This had a great effect.
"We became better at both acting in real time and at preventing crimes that were about to happen," says Holmström.
Nationally, but most clearly in Stockholm, the increase in unsolved cases has stopped as of 2023. The method of an "unbroken chain of reaction" that spread across the regions was crucial, according to Tobias Bergkvist.
"This development was made throughout the country. Around the same time, we reached almost a 70 percent clearance rate."
The improvement is also visible in how many more acts of violence are now stopped, he says.
Open investigations into firearm homicides, broken down by police region, 2015 and 2025.
An open case is a criminal case that has been received and is not closed in the police log. The case is a single file and may contain several reported crimes and suspicions. Parts of the case may have been prosecuted.
Bergslagen. 2015: 2, 2025: 11
Mid. 2015: 2, 2025: 22
North. 2015: 1, 2025: 2
Stockholm. 2015: 48, 2025: 185
South. 2015: 40, 2025: 130
West. 2015: 39, 2025: 72
East. 2015: 4, 2025: 29
National Operations Department: 2015: 5, 2025: 8
Source: Police, operational management and analysis
The shooting death of Einar
The 19-year-old rapper Nils "Einar" Grönberg was shot to death outside his home in Hammarby Sjöstad in October 2021. The investigation is with the cold case group in Stockholm.
25-year-old murdered in Uppsala
A 25-year-old man who worked in home care in Uppsala was shot to death near his home in the Sala backe district early in the morning of September 12, 2023. A relative of gang leader Rawa Majid lived at the same address and the police hypothesis is that the shooter was actually looking for that person. The 25-year-old himself had no criminal connections.
Murder of 13-year-old boy in Handen
On September 13, 2023, a 13-year-old boy was found shot to death in Handen, south of Stockholm. A few months later, two men in their 30s were arrested as suspects in the case, but they were later cleared in the investigation. No further arrests have been made.
