Norway

GATEFOTBALL

Gatefotball (Street Soccer) is a project started by the Salvation Army. It focuses on drug rehabilitation for men and women through sport.

The Salvation Army in Norway has been using football to reach out to different groups for more than 30 years. Gatefotball was officially created in 2005. Since then, the programme has expanded into many cities across Norway, and an annual Norwegian Street Football Cup was founded.

ORGANISATION DETAILS

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PARTICIPANTS

Homeless men and women, those affected by substance abuse, and other marginalised groups.

LOCATIONS

Oslo, Lillestrøm, Trondheim, Bergen, Stavanger / Sandnes, Egersund and Haugesund.

Country statistics

2 out of 189 in Human Development Index rankings (UNDP, 2022)

Average annual salary per person $102,910 (World Bank, 2023)

12.2% of the population live below the national poverty line [UNSDG 2021]

Norway occupies the western half of the Scandinavian peninsula, bordering Sweden, Finland and Russia to the east and open ocean to the west.

Nearly half of the 5.6 million population live in the far south, around capital Oslo – 85.9% of people inhabit urban areas [Worldometers, 2025].

Abundant waterpower, offshore oil and peaceful labour relations have been major factors in Norway’s rapid industrial growth, reinforced by a comprehensive social welfare system giving it second highest standard of living in the world (UNDP, 2022).

Most of the population are ethnically Nordic (81.5%) while the northern rugged Finnmark Plateau is home to the [c 60,000] Sami (also called Laplanders) who arrived in Norway at least 10,000 years ago. Formerly subject to widespread ethnic discrimination, the Sami are now legally recognised as a distinct culture (CIA World Factbook).

86,589 people migrated to Norway in 2023, the majority of whom were from Ukraine (32 935) (Statistics Norway, 2024). At the start of 2024 there were approximately 931,000 immigrants living in Norway. There were also just over 221,000 residents who were born in Norway to immigrant parents. Together, these two groups currently make up 20.8 per cent of the Norwegian population (IMDI, 2024).

We all need a place to call home, the 2021-24 Norwegian government strategy to prioritise housing for disadvantaged individuals, aimed to ensure: no one shall be homeless; children and young people shall have good living conditions; and people with disabilities shall have the opportunity to choose where and how they want to live. It revealed that while 80% of people own the home they live in, around 179,000 individuals are disadvantaged in the housing market - roughly 78,000 of those are children and young people under the age of 20 [Norwegian Government, 2022].

The Homeless World Cup was hosted by Norway in Oslo in 2017 and the event will return to the city in August 2025. Read the article about Norway’s approach to tackling homelessness which was included in the 2024 Cities Ending Homelessness Report.