IN Brief:
- Stockholm Business Region’s latest report identifies €124bn of planned construction and infrastructure investment by 2040.
- Residential buildings account for €49bn, with rail, subway, and light rail adding €16bn.
- The region faces a forecast shortage of tens of thousands of construction-related workers.
Stockholm Business Region has published a new construction and infrastructure report identifying €124bn of planned investment across the greater Stockholm region by 2040.
The Stockholm Construction & Infrastructure Report 2026, commissioned by Stockholm Business Region and written by Ramboll Management Consulting, shows a substantial increase from €115bn in 2024 and €95bn in 2017. The report maps major planned investments across housing, transport, commercial buildings, public facilities, energy, and waste infrastructure.
Residential buildings represent the largest single category, with around €49bn of investment. Transport infrastructure accounts for roughly €29bn in total, including €16bn for railway, subway, and light rail, and €13bn for streets, roads, and highways. Further planned investment includes €15bn for office buildings, €7bn for education facilities, and €6bn for energy and waste facilities.
The project pipeline includes Stockholm Wood City in Sickla, Nacka Municipality, described as the largest known urban wood construction project in the world. The district covers 250,000 sq m and is planned as a mixed urban environment with workplaces, housing, restaurants, and shops. The first buildings are expected to be completed in 2027.
Another major housing programme is Stockholmshusen, which aims to create around 3,300 rental apartments across 32 projects. The programme is based on repetition, serial construction, overlapping processes, sustainability requirements, and efficient energy supply, with the aim of reducing time and cost through scale.
Major transport projects in the report include a new subway line in Stockholm, Uppsala Light Rail, the East Link high-speed railway, and the Oslo–Stockholm 2.55 rail corridor. Stockholm city accounts for about €34bn of planned investment, while Strängnäs, Uppsala, Gävle, Norrköping, Västerås, Linköping, and Karlstad also feature substantial pipelines.
The scale of the programme creates a major workforce challenge. The report says planned construction exceeds what can be delivered with the existing regional workforce, with Stockholm County alone needing approximately 35,000 to 40,000 construction workers in mostly manual trades. Forecasts point to a total deficit of nearly 30,000 workers across construction-related disciplines by 2040, including a shortage of nearly 15,000 construction workers.
The pipeline places Stockholm among Europe’s most active long-term construction markets. Housing demand, public transport investment, energy resilience, and sustainable development are moving together, creating opportunities across industrialised construction, timber systems, rail expertise, energy infrastructure, and skilled labour supply.
The report also exposes the delivery gap now affecting many high-growth regions. Finance and political ambition are only part of the programme. Capacity, procurement, design standardisation, labour availability, and supply-chain depth will determine how much of the pipeline can be converted into completed work.
Many European markets are facing the same combination of housing shortages, infrastructure renewal, labour constraints, and carbon targets. Stockholm gives those pressures a concentrated form, with the next decade likely to test whether sustainable growth can be delivered at the scale already set out in the region’s plans.
