Sweden Abbreviation: SE and SWE

Sweden abbreviation codes side by side

Each code below belongs to a different system. They are not interchangeable, so match the code to the place you are writing it.

For more countries and how their codes are built, see the country abbreviations guide.

Why SE and not SW

People often guess SW since the English name begins with those letters. The ISO list picked SE instead, taking the S and the E from SwEden. That choice also keeps the code distinct from others nearby on the list.

There is no official SW code assigned to any country today, so if a form rejects SW, that is the reason. The three-letter code is easier to guess, because SWE simply uses the first three letters of the English name.

SWE in sports and travel

At international games, scoreboards and medal tables show three-letter codes beside each athlete. Sweden appears as SWE in those lists. Machine readable passports and many visa forms also use SWE in the nationality field, since three letters leave less room for mix ups.

Airline tickets are a separate matter. Airports have their own three-letter codes, so Stockholm Arlanda appears as ARN, not SWE. Airport codes work in a similar way to BNA for Nashville or LAX for Los Angeles.

Money, phones and web addresses

The Swedish krona carries the code SEK. The SE part ties back to the country code, and the K stands for krona. On a price tag inside Sweden you will usually see "kr" after the number instead of SEK.

Websites based in Sweden often end in .se, the country's top level domain. Phone numbers dialed from another country start with +46, followed by the local number without its first zero.

• Bank form: currency SEK
• Phone list: +46 then the number
• Web address: name.se

Writing Sweden in a sentence

In normal writing, spell the word out: "My cousin studies in Sweden." Short codes look out of place in essays, emails and news copy. The adjective is Swedish, and a person from the country is a Swede.

Informal notes sometimes use "Swe." or "Swed." as a quick shorthand, but neither is a standard abbreviation. If you need something short in a chart or a table, SE or SWE is clearer to most readers, as long as you use one style all the way through.

Codes that look like Sweden's

A few nearby codes cause regular mistakes:

• CH is Switzerland, from its Latin name. See Switzerland abbreviation.
• SZ is Eswatini, the African kingdom once called Swaziland.
• DK is Denmark, Sweden's neighbor. See Denmark abbreviation.
• SE on a US map can mean southeast, which has nothing to do with the country.

When a form is international, read SE as Sweden. When it is a compass or a street sign, it is a direction.