Moving to Norway from New Zealand

Our residency index: 50/100, possible, with conditions. It is our own rating of how realistic long-term residency in Norway is for New Zealand citizens, based on the routes Norway publishes. Realistic long-term residency runs through either a skilled-worker job offer or establishing and actively running your own business (self-employed permit); Norway deliberately has no passive-income, retirement, or golden-visa route, and permanent residence follows after three years of permit-based stay.

The cheapest self-funded routes we track:

• Income: about $3,062 a month (Norway self-employed person permit, business must be likely to yield pre-tax profit of NOK 341,373/yr (about NOK 28,448/mo); converted at 9.29 NOK per USD; as of June 2026)

Check the official requirements before you apply: amounts, conditions and exchange rates change, and what a couple needs can differ from a single applicant's threshold.

For short visits, New Zealand passport holders can visit visa-free for up to 90 days, according to the passport-index dataset. Short-stay entry covers visits; living there takes a residence permit.

Ranked by our match model for a typical couple who both hold New Zealand passports, using the preset answers of our best places to live list. Your own answers would change the order. We pick the cities, up to five, by how often English Wikipedia readers looked them up over the past year.

1. 1

   1. Bergen

   67% match

   Est. cost

   €4,346/mo

   Avg temp

   7°C

   Safety index

   75/100

2. 2

   2. Trondheim

   65% match

   Est. cost

   €4,285/mo

   Avg temp

   6°C

   Safety index

   75/100

3. 3

   3. Oslo

   64% match

   Est. cost

   €4,602/mo

   Avg temp

   7°C

   Safety index

   75/100

Our estimate for a couple living centrally runs from €4,285 a month in Trondheim to €4,602 in Oslo. For comparison, we estimate €3,812 a month in Auckland. Use these figures to compare places rather than to set a budget.

Norway is in our high tax tier (high personal income tax); New Zealand is in our low to medium tax tier (moderate personal income tax). Tiers describe each country's own income tax. They do not cover tax you may still owe in New Zealand after you leave, or the treaty between the two countries, so check both with a tax adviser before you move.

• Best places to live in Scandinavia and the Nordics

• Moving to Norway from the US
• Moving to Norway from the UK
• Moving to Norway from Canada
• Moving to Norway from Australia
• Moving to Norway from Ireland

Every country and origin we cover

Every figure here comes from the datasets behind our city and country pages:

• Short-stay entry: the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT license), which records the entry rule for short visits on each passport.
• Residency index, routes and thresholds: the OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed against published immigration rules, figures as of June 2026. It is a summary, not legal advice.
• City ranking: our match model, the one behind the quiz, run with a typical couple's preset answers and both partners holding New Zealand passports. It ranks up to five of the country's best-known cities: of the cities in our quiz (100,000 people or more, capitals and a few towns movers seek out, such as Faro), the five most read about on English Wikipedia over the past year. It folds suburbs into their main city and leaves out countries with a residency index under 40 and areas under a US State Department Level 4 advisory, as our best-cities lists do.
• Costs: our cost model, a country-level cost-of-living index scaled for city size, from our city dataset (last rebuilt June 2026).
• Tax tiers: three coarse bands we assign by hand from each country's top marginal personal income tax rate and overall tax reputation.