This is an English translation of Dorte Lønsmann and Jacob Thøgersen’s article. Read the Danish article here.
During the recent election campaign for municipal and regional elections in Denmark, we encountered a new linguistic phenomenon: although the election campaign was conducted predominantly in Danish, the English language – and other languages – also played a significant role, at least in some places. This has led us to consider: what role does English actually play in the Danish democracy?
Unlike in parliamentary elections, foreign nationals residing in Denmark have the right to vote in local elections if they are EU citizens or if they have lived in Denmark for at least 4 years. Kommunernes Landsforening (Local Government Denmark) estimates that around 10% of voters in the 2025 local elections were foreign nationals. Many of them speak Danish, but there are obviously also some who do not. For some parties, attracting this voter group has been part of their election campaign strategy, which may explain the increased visibility of languages other than Danish in the election campaign. But that is probably not the only factor at play.
English on the posters
One of the places where the English language has been visible in the election campaign has been on the election posters.
The above examples are all taken from Ørestad Syd in the municipality of Copenhagen during the election campaign in October and November 2025. Quantitatively, English election posters account for a relatively small proportion of all election posters in the area. A count of election posters on a single road in Ørestad Syd (Robert Jacobsens Vej) on November 4th 2025 shows that out of a total of 219 election posters, 13 were in languages other than Danish. Of these, one (from Radikale Venstre) was in Turkish, while 12 (corresponding to 5%) were in English or a mixture of Danish and English (including Frie Grønne’s posters, which all have the text “Independent Greens” at the bottom).
If we take a closer look at the above election posters, which all use English, it is clear that English is used in at least three different ways. Firstly, English is used to provide information about the local elections, e.g. on the Venstre poster with the text “Local and regional elections November 18” and Socialistisk Folkeparti’s (SF’s) “You have the right to vote. Vote on Nov 18th”. While Venstre’s poster in the upper left corner provides information about the date of the election in English in small print, the poster is dominated by a call to “Vote Venstre”. SF’s English-language poster is dominated by a picture of the party’s candidate for mayor of Copenhagen, Sisse Marie Welling, and by text in English informing voters of their right to vote in the election on November 18th. The choice of English can here be interpreted as a way of informing citizens who do not speak Danish that there is an election and that they have the right to vote. In the case of Venstre, however, there is also a clear call to vote for that particular party. Here, English is used to communicate a political message, which is also the case on Liberal Alliance’s poster with the text “Expats create value”. Here, the category ‘expats’ is brought directly into play, and the Liberal Alliance candidate positions herself as positive towards this group. Finally, we also see examples of the use of English that is not directly addressed to foreign nationals. On the last poster from SF candidate Sadek Al-Amood with the text “In the mood? Vote Al-Amood”, English is probably used more as a humorous element, where the choice of language allows the candidate to make a pun on the name Al-Amood.
But English was not only used by the political parties. Danske Regioner (Danish Regions) and Kommunernes Landsforening (Local Government Denmark) advertised the local and regional elections in both Danish and English on posters in the Copenhagen metro, but also put up posters in English describing how local elections work with detailed information about polling station opening hours and the process involving polling cards and ballot papers. Ørestad Innovation City Copenhagen, an ‘innovation partnership’ that aims to promote Ørestad as Copenhagen’s green innovation district, also provided information about the election in English on posters in the local area and in the local Ørestad Avis newspaper. As the text “Expats can vote!” more than suggests, their posters are aimed directly at this group of foreign nationals, who are invited to election events where they can meet local politicians.
Inclusion and linguistic diversity
Languages other than English also played a role in the election campaign. The multilingual poster from Enhedslisten, which we captured here on Peder Lykkes Vej a few kilometres north of Robert Jacobsens Vej, contains the text “A Copenhagen everyone can afford” in English, Arabic, Ukrainian, Turkish and Danish. It seems as if the many languages are as much a message as the linguistic content itself. ‘We support linguistic diversity’ the poster seems to say with its form rather than its content. Similarly, Radikale Venstre’s posters (captured here in Turkish and German in Ørestad Syd) are in a total of ten different languages, namely English, Farsi, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Spanish, Turkish, German and Ukrainian. According to the party itself, this is partly to signal that foreign nationals should feel welcome in Denmark, according to the party itself, but also to attract international voters to the ballot box.
But isn’t this just a Copenhagen thing?
There is a big difference in the number of foreign nationals living in different parts of the country. And yes, there are relatively many foreign nationals living in Copenhagen. But here too, there are big differences between individual neighbourhoods. While 60% of residents in Ørestad Syd have Danish citizenship and 40% have foreign citizenship[2], in Gamle Brygge on Islands Brygge, approx. 5 kilometres from Ørestad Syd, only 11% are foreign citizens. Urbanplanen, which is geographically located between the two, also lies between the two in terms of population composition with 81% Danish citizens and 19% others. But while Ørestad Syd’s foreign nationals are described as “expats”, the word used for Urbanplanen’s residents is more often “immigrant” or “refugee”; and while in Ørestad Syd 25% of foreigners are from so-called “Western” countries and 14% from “non-Western countries”, the figures for Urbanplanen show that 6% are from “Western countries” and 14% from “non-Western countries”. This difference is also reflected on the election posters in the areas. While in Ørestad Syd, we found 6% non-Danish election posters (13 out of 219), in the area around Urbanplanen, there were no English-language posters among the 271 posters we counted on the 2nd of November. The only non-Danish touches were the multilingual poster from Enhedslisten above (which we saw five times) and five posters from Frie Grønne, which, as mentioned earlier, all have the party name in both Danish and English, “Independent Greens”.
Election campaigns in English are therefore not found everywhere in Copenhagen. Nor is campaigning in English unique to Copenhagen. But it is probably more common in areas with a large number of foreign nationals. In Billund Municipality, where foreign nationals make up 16% of the population, the Billund International list ran exclusively international candidates for the municipal council. On their Facebook page, the list writes: “We are a civic and political engagement group for all residents of Billund Municipality …, with a special focus on empowering our diverse international community.” With 1.5% of the votes, however, the list did not get any candidates on the city council this time around, but we wonder if city council meetings in Billund could one day be held in English?
Danish democracy: the local is (also) international
Danish democracy is in Danish – and now also in English and other languages. This is because Danish society is diverse. While Danish is still the dominant language in Denmark, many other languages are used every day. This is nothing new. However, we believe it is new that languages other than Danish play a role in a Danish election campaign.
As we saw above, languages other than Danish are used for different purposes. In one example, we saw how English functions as a linguistic resource that can be easily drawn upon in a humorous and eye-catching play on words that most people are expected to understand. We have argued elsewhere[3] that English has become an everyday language in Denmark that the vast majority of people have some knowledge of, and which has, in a sense, gained a natural place in Denmark alongside Danish. This is the tendency we see unfolding when a candidate humorously asks voters if they are “In the mood?”.
In a number of other examples, we saw how English is used as a lingua franca, a contact language for communicating with voters from many different linguistic backgrounds. English is not used to tell people how to vote or when elections are held because there are many American or Australian voters in Denmark, but because there are many non-Danish-speaking voters. Here, the use of English reflects its status as a medium of communication between speakers from many different parts of the world – especially in Denmark, where the Danes’ own high level of English proficiency makes English the natural lingua franca.
Unlike the English election posters and information boards, the use of other languages plays a more symbolic role. The multilingual election posters from Radikale Venstre and Enhedslisten with their short slogans seem to be intended more towards sending a political message about inclusion and openness rather than to provide information about election processes and voting rights. In particular, the use of Ukrainian seems purely symbolic, as the many Ukrainians who have come to Denmark since the war broke out have not yet lived here for four years and are therefore not eligible to vote in local elections (and, moreover, the majority of them come from Eastern Ukraine and probably have Russian as their mother tongue). But that does not mean we cannot try to make them feel welcome – and at the same time utilise diverse linguistic resources to do some political positioning.
[2] All numbers are from Copenhagen Municipality’s Statistics Data, KKBEF8.
[3] See this book (in Danish): Lønsmann, Kraft, Mortensen og Thøgersen. 2024. Engelsk i Danmark – What’s the story? The book was reviewed on Lingoblog by Kirsten Nørgaard Nielsen in Danish.
Dorte Lønsmann and Jacob Thøgersen are associate professors at the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Languages and the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen, respectively. Together with colleagues at the University of Copenhagen, they participated in the project English and Globalisation in Denmark: A changing sociolinguistic landscape in 2021-2025. In 2024, the project participants published the book Engelsk i Danmark – What’s the story? with Aarhus University Press.
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