NRJ Sweden built its identity on being first: the first commercial station in the country to broadcast on its own dedicated frequency. More than three decades later, in 2026, it became the station that lost what NRJ helped establish, a national commercial radio license.
Sweden's First Commercial Station on Its Own Frequency
Per the Swedish Wikipedia entry on NRJ, the station launched in Sweden on October 1, 1993, becoming the first commercial radio station in the country to broadcast on its own frequency rather than sharing space with other operators. The name traces back to NRJ's original French network, founded in Paris in 1981 by Jean-Paul Baudecroux, where the letters NRJ are pronounced the same way as the French word "énergie."
A Rapid Rise, Then a Rival Takes the Lead
NRJ's Swedish rise was fast: by 1994 it was already Stockholm's largest commercial station, and across 1994 and 1995 the company bought up 17 additional regional broadcasting concessions, becoming the format leader nationally by 1995. That lead did not hold. Power Hit Radio launched as a competitor in 1996, and by 1999 Rix FM had overtaken NRJ as Sweden's largest commercial radio network, a position NRJ never fully reclaimed. The station spent 2004 to 2012 in partnership with MTG Radio before switching to work with SBS Radio starting in 2013, and today it operates under Bauer Media Group with a contemporary hit radio format and the slogan "Musik som gör dig glad," music that makes you happy.
2026: The National License Goes to Aftonbladet
According to SVT's coverage of the decision, Sweden's Media Authority announced in February 2026 that it would not renew NRJ's national commercial license, awarding it instead to the newspaper Aftonbladet for a new radio channel launching August 1, 2026, while Bauer's Mix Megapol and Kilohertz AB's Rix FM kept their licenses through 2034. NRJ's leadership said the decision meant 1.5 million listeners would lose access to the station in its national form and put staff jobs at risk. NRJ was not silenced entirely, however: the company retained around 20 regional broadcasting licenses, keeping it on FM across most of Sweden, just on different frequencies than the national signal it had held since 2018.
Why It's Worth Tuning In
NRJ Sweden is a station whose own history now mirrors the fast-moving, competitive market it helped create in the 1990s, a pioneer that built Sweden's commercial radio landscape from a single new frequency and, more than thirty years later, had to rebuild its reach one regional license at a time.