Yes — but the useful answer is more specific than that. Norway’s fastlege shortage is measured in a particular way: the number of people sitting on a list without a permanent doctor. That figure rose above 200,000 in 2023 before improving, and the lists concerned are concentrated in small and less central municipalities rather than spread evenly. Meanwhile the route in is gated by a competence requirement that has nothing to do with how badly a municipality needs someone.

Sources: The figures below describe the 2022–2024 period, which is the span the published analyses cover. Helsedirektoratet updates the underlying count monthly in its fastlege dashboard, so check that for the current position before relying on any number here.

Sources: Helsedirektoratet — innbyggere uten fast lege (last professional revision 26 March 2026); Helsedirektoratet — allmennlegetjenesten, hovedfunn og vurderinger; Helsedirektoratet — positiv utvikling i fastlegeordningen; Forskrift om kompetansekrav for leger i den kommunale helse- og omsorgstjenesten, FOR-2017-02-17-192; Forskrift om fastlegeordning i kommunene, FOR-2025-12-02-2405.

How the shortage is counted

An ubesatt liste is a fastlege list where the municipality has no agreement with a permanent doctor. The list still exists and the patients on it are still entitled to general practitioner services — the list may be covered by one or more locums, or neighbouring fastleger may take the patients for a period.

That is the measure to watch, and the trajectory through the difficult years is worth knowing in outline. Around 145,000 people were on such lists in January 2022; by January 2023 that had risen to roughly 220,000, with the number of lists without a permanent doctor going from 231 to 324. By May 2023 the figure was about 210,000, or 3.8 per cent of everyone on a list. At the end of 2023 it was around 214,000, and during 2024 both the number of lists and the number of people on them fell.

So the picture across that period is a sharp deterioration to 2023 followed by improvement — not a straight line in either direction. Where it has settled since is a question for the dashboard rather than for this article.

Two cautions from Helsedirektoratet’s own notes on the indicator are worth carrying. Late or missing reporting from municipalities about fastleger who have stopped practising is a known error source. And roughly half of Norway’s municipalities have fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, several with very few fastleger, so local figures can swing sharply over short periods.

Where the shortage actually is

This is the part that matters most if you are deciding where to look for work.

Recruitment difficulties are greatest in small municipalities. Helsedirektoratet found that, apart from municipalities with under 2,000 inhabitants, the share of unfilled lists rose in the least central municipalities through 2023, improving somewhat in early 2024.

Northern Norway illustrates the concentration. In January 2023, 79 of 652 fastlege posts there were vacant — 12.1 per cent — with over 47,000 people on lists without a permanent doctor, and 15 of 80 northern municipalities lacked a specialist in general medicine at all.

Municipalities have been leaning heavily on locum agencies as a result: three in five hired doctors for general practice through an agency in 2022, and many said they could not have recruited locums without them.

One structural point explains why vacancies persist rather than being absorbed. A fastlege must prioritise their own list, and a municipality has no legal power to require remaining self-employed fastleger to take on patients from an unfilled list. Any such arrangement has to be voluntary.

What has been changing

Several things moved in the same direction from 2023 onwards.

Recruitment improved. 2022 was the first year since 2017 in which recruitment moved the right way, and 2023 brought a significant increase in doctors under 40 entering the scheme — many still completing their specialisation.

Workload fell. The reduction in average list length in 2023 was the largest recorded, and surveys of fastleger suggested a more manageable workload. High workload had been one of the main reasons doctors left.

The funding model changed. From 1 May 2023 the per-capita basic grant was recalculated and its general level raised, with the previous knekkpunkt removed, so that doctors with patients needing extensive follow-up receive more.

Employment form shifted. About half of new fastleger in 2023 chose to be municipally employed rather than self-employed, and that trend has continued. For a doctor arriving from abroad, that is significant: it means salaried posts genuinely exist, without buying into a practice.

The gate that demand does not open

Here is where the shortage stops helping you.

Since 1 March 2017, any doctor taking up a fastlege agreement — or another patient-facing post in the municipal health and care service — must already be a specialist in general medicine or formally under specialisation in it. Norwegian authorisation alone does not satisfy that requirement, and a municipality’s need does not waive it.

There are three exemptions, and they are the practical entry points: locums of up to a year, participation in municipally organised legevakt outside your ordinary work, and doctors with approved specialist training working outside the fastlege scheme.

For most people the realistic route is to enter as an ALIS — a doctor specialising in general medicine — which satisfies the requirement while you train. Municipalities with recruitment difficulties can offer ALIS agreements with extra facilitation and follow-up, and regional ALIS offices exist to help them set these up. The fastlege route article covers how that works.

And for anyone authorised on the basis of education from outside the EEA, LIS1 comes before specialisation can begin at all. That is the real bottleneck, and it sits well before any question of where the vacancies are. Since 1 January 2026 certain formalised post-graduate programmes completed abroad can be assessed as counting towards it — the LIS1 article sets out what does and does not count.

The honest summary

Norway does need more GPs, the need is concentrated in places many people would not choose first, and the sequence to reach it is long: authorisation, then LIS1, then specialisation in general medicine, during which a fastlege agreement becomes possible.

The encouraging part is that municipalities with the hardest recruitment are also the ones with the most flexibility to offer — salaried posts, ALIS agreements, and support through specialisation. The discouraging part is that none of it shortens the sequence.

Which route reads your file depends on where you trained rather than your nationality — that distinction settles it. And for doctors trained outside the EEA, a Norwegian test at CEFR B2 is a legal condition of authorisation before any of this begins. What the CEFR levels describe is the place to start, since general practice is the setting where language demand is highest and support thinnest.