Oslo’s city council gave the green light in the first half of 2026 to only 320 new dwellings, in four zoning plans. The annual target is 3,000 — ten times as many — NRK reported. The figure is homes zoned (approved in plans), not construction starts.

Tamina Rauf, Labour’s housing spokesperson on the council, asked for numbers after a stretch with few cases from the city government. “The figures are clear. They are far from their own target. I am very worried housing prices will keep rising because the city government is not zoning more homes,” she said.

Since 2023 the council has approved 8,238 dwellings, according to a note from city development councillor Anita Leirvik North (Conservatives). In 2025 the 3,000 target was beaten; more than 1,500 were in a single project, Økern sentrum, still years from completion, NRK wrote.

North said she is working continuously to zone more homes and that larger cases are coming. The municipal plan, she said, allows 63,000 to 90,000 new homes by 2040; in theory the plan has space for 121,000. Rauf replied that friends looking for a first home are not buying in 2040 — they want to buy next year.

Haakon Riekeles (Liberal), chair of the development committee, put the delay on the city government: more than 3,000 dwellings sit in the city-development department. He said cases recently sent to the council add up to more than 600 zoned homes.

The Home Builders’ Association measures something else: actual starts. For Oslo, the first half of 2026 shows 1,118 units started, above the same period in 2025, but still below estimated annual need. NRK’s 320 does not contradict that table — they are different steps in the same chain.

Image: Leifern, Grünerløkka, Oslo, 23 September 2005, CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia Commons. A residential district in Oslo, not the 2026 zoning plans.

Sources consulted: Svake boligtall i Oslo: 320 nye boliger fikk grønt lys første halvår — NRK Stor-Oslo; Geografisk oversikt over salg og igangsetting av nye boliger, Q2 and H1 2026 — Boligprodusentene.