Registration of birth in the Population Register System

Births of Finnish citizens outside Finland must be notified to the Digital and Population Data Agency(Link to another website.) (Opens New Window). You can also submit the notification at a Finnish embassy or send it there to be posted to the Local Register Office for registration.

Birth certificates issued by an EU country are accepted without requiring that a so-called apostille(Link to another website.) (Opens New Window) be attached to the document.

In other countries the original birth certificate or a copy of it, authenticated at a mission of Finland, must be appended to the notification. The document must be legalised(Link to another website.) (Opens New Window) and, if it has been issued in some other language than Finnish, Swedish or English, an authorised translation in one of these languages must be provided. Translations made abroad must be legalised. Translations made by an authorised translator in Finland are valid as such.

An Apostille stamp is not required for a birth certificate, which is issued by an EU country authority and a translation of the certificate is not needed if a multilingual standard form is appended to the document.

Child birth in the United States

Births of Finnish citizens outside Finland must be notified to the Digital and Population Data Agency(Link to another website.) by submitting the following documents:

You can mail the documents directly to the Digital and Population Data Service Agency or to the Finnish Mission. If you wish to mail the registration documents to the Finnish Mission, please attach a money order or certified check addressed to the Embassy of Finland in Washington DC, Consulate General of Finland in New York or Consulate General of Finland in Los Angeles.

Transfer of the population data notification through the Finnish Mission to the Digital and Population Data Service Agency is subject to service fee. 

A child born outside marriage having a Finnish mother

If the child is born out outside marriage, the child’s paternity must be first confirmed, and only after that it can be added in the Finnish Population Register, i.e. the child’s father can be registered in Finland.

A paternity confirmation can be, for instance, a ruling issued by a court or another state authority, as well as a confirmation or registration of a legal action. A U.S. birth certificate cannot be considered a valid paternity confirmation.

The U.S. paternity decision must be legalized with an Apostille certificate and must be attached to the birth registration (see the instructions)The authority in charge of issuing paternity decisions varies by state.