Nordic news media landscapes 2025

The market for news media and journalism is undergoing rapid and far-reaching change. Digitalisation and globalisation have fundamentally altered the conditions for producing, distributing, and consuming news. At the same time, news media operate in societies marked by increasing political polarisation, economic uncertainty, more heterogeneous populations, and heightened geopolitical tensions. Together, these developments pose significant challenges for professional journalism and for the democratic functions it is expected to fulfil. Nordic news media are not insulated from these global structural shifts. The purpose of this report is to describe and compare the markets for news media and their framework conditions in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden in 2025. Drawing on an extensive body of independent, publicly available, and quality-assured data, it offers a current, comprehensive, and empirically grounded overview of the Nordic news media sector.

Nordic News Media Landscapes 2025 has been compiled and written by a project team at Nordicom and builds on Nordicom’s long-standing experience of documenting, analysing, and communicating developments in the Nordic media systems. We hope that the report will be of interest to scholars, journalists, students, industry representatives, and public officials engaged in media policy.

Nordicom is a centre for Nordic media research at the University of Gothenburg and a strategic partner to the Nordic Council of Ministers.