Sveriges Radio P2 streams classical music, jazz, and folk and world music around the clock from Sweden's public broadcaster, alongside educational content and minority-language programming. You can stream it live and free right now on Radio Shuffle, wherever you are in the world.
Launched as Sweden's FM Network Expanded
P2 went on air on November 26, 1955, as Sweden's second radio channel, arriving as the country's FM transmitter network was being built out nationally, according to Wikipedia's history of the channel. Sweden had introduced FM broadcasting back in 1947, notably early by European standards, and P2's launch rode that same wave of infrastructure expansion, giving the country a second national voice on the radio dial less than a decade after FM itself arrived.
Finding Its Identity in a 1966 Reshuffle
P2 did not start out as a dedicated classical music station. It carried a broader mix of programming through its first decade before Sveriges Radio restructured its channels in 1966, profiling P2 specifically as the home for education, regional programming, and what the broadcaster called "serious music." The channel's current identity solidified soon after, once sister channel P1 pivoted to become a speech-only station in the mid-1960s. With P1 handling news and talk, P2 became free to focus entirely on classical music, jazz, and folk and world music, a role it has held ever since.
From Earliest Compositions to Contemporary Electronic Music
P2's programming today spans an unusually wide historical range, running everything from the earliest known musical compositions through twentieth-century and contemporary classical works. The station also carves out two hours a week specifically for contemporary electronic music, a deliberate nod to the fact that "serious music" keeps evolving rather than stopping at any particular century. That range places P2 alongside international public broadcasters built around a similar mission, stations like BBC Radio 3, CBC Radio 2, and France Musique, all built to give classical and art music a dedicated home away from commercial pop formats.
A Voice for Sweden's Minority Languages
Beyond music, P2's schedule carries specialized services including SR Sisuradio, Sameradion, and SR International, delivering programming in Finnish, Sami, English, Arabic, Romani, and Somali. Educational broadcasts from Utbildningsradion round out mornings and afternoons, making P2 as much a platform for Sweden's linguistic diversity as it is a classical music station.
Tune In
Nearly seventy years after arriving alongside Sweden's expanding FM network, Sveriges Radio P2 remains the country's dedicated home for classical, jazz, and folk music, carrying centuries of composition alongside contemporary work and a genuinely multilingual public service mission. Stream it free on Radio Shuffle to hear it live.