Mullvad and the Far-Right Donation: Should You Switch VPN in 2026?

At the end of June 2026, a story broke that put one of the most respected privacy VPNs in an uncomfortable spot. Daniel Berntsson, co-founder and co-owner of Mullvad, personally donated 5 million SEK (around $525,000) to Örebropartiet, a Swedish party known for hardline “remigration” positions. The Swedish outlet Flamman published the story, and Berntsson confirmed the donation by email.

For a brand built on the idea that privacy is a universal right, this landed hard. So let’s separate what actually happened from the headlines, because the loudest version of this story (“Mullvad funds the far right”) is not quite what the facts say.

What happened, precisely

The donation was personal. It came from Berntsson as an individual, not from Mullvad VPN AB, not from its parent company Amagicom AB, and not from its sister company Tillitis AB. That distinction matters, and Mullvad made it the center of its response.

The number is still striking. Berntsson’s 5 million kronor made up roughly 72% of everything Örebropartiet took in during 2025, and reporting described it as the largest single private donation to any Swedish party that year. So while it was a personal gift, it was not a small or symbolic one. One man’s money is now a controlling share of a fringe party’s budget.

Örebropartiet and its leader Markus Allard sit on the populist far-right, with “remigration” (mass return of immigrants) among their stated positions. That is why the disclosure hit privacy communities so hard: the audience that chooses Mullvad skews heavily toward people who care about civil liberties, and this looked like a betrayal of that value set.

Mullvad’s response

Co-CEO Fredrik Strömberg did not hide behind a press statement. He confirmed that no Mullvad entity was involved, then added something unusual for a founder talking about his own co-owner: “Speaking for myself, I don’t like that he made this donation, and I know this view is shared by many of my colleagues.” He framed the company’s position as unchanged: “Speaking as the co-CEO of Mullvad, we will continue to protect the universal right to privacy.”

Mullvad also said it would refund customers who want to cancel because of the donation. That is a meaningful move. It admits the obvious (that some users will walk) and refuses to trap them in a subscription to do it.

Does this touch your data?

Here is the part that gets lost in the outrage. A donation, however distasteful you find its recipient, does not change how Mullvad handles traffic. The technical picture is the same as it was a month ago. Mullvad still generates numbered accounts with no email and no name, still accepts cash, still runs a Cure53-audited no-logs policy, and still cannot identify its customers because it never collected the data. In our comparison it scores 4.22/5 overall, with a perfect 5/5 on encryption and leak protection.

So if your only question is “can Berntsson’s politics expose my browsing,” the honest answer is no. The architecture is built so there is nothing to hand over, to anyone, for any reason. That was true before the story and it is true now.

The problem is not technical. It is about who you are willing to pay. And that is a legitimate reason to leave, even when the product still works.

The trust question is real

Choosing a VPN is an act of trust. You are routing your entire internet connection through a company and taking its word (backed, ideally, by audits) that it behaves. Part of that trust is technical. Part of it is about values, because a no-logs promise is only as good as the people who could choose to break it.

Mullvad’s whole pitch has always leaned on values as much as engineering. “We believe privacy is a universal right” is on its About page. When a co-owner writes a seven-figure cheque to a party whose politics many privacy advocates see as hostile to exactly that principle, the values pitch takes a hit that no server audit can repair. You are allowed to find the product excellent and the ownership unacceptable at the same time.

Want to compare all VPNs side by side? Check our full VPN comparison table with scores across 18 criteria.

Should you switch?

That depends on why you chose Mullvad in the first place.

If you picked it purely for the anonymity engineering, the numbered accounts and cash payments, nothing technical has changed and you can reasonably stay. If you picked it partly because you believed in the company’s stated values, and this donation breaks that for you, switching is a rational response and Mullvad will refund you for doing it. Neither choice is wrong. This is a values call, not a security one.

If you do move, two audited providers cover most of what Mullvad does well:

Proton VPN is the closest match on principle. It comes from the team behind Proton Mail, is based in Switzerland, is open source, audited, and runs a capable free tier. It scores 4.24/5 in our data and its politics-and-privacy track record is clean. Read our Proton VPN review for the detail.

NordVPN is the pick if you want everything to work: 4.63/5 overall, 5/5 streaming, Panama jurisdiction, audited no-logs. You give up Mullvad’s account anonymity, but you gain streaming and a much larger network. Our Mullvad vs NordVPN comparison maps the trade in full.

For pure anonymity purists who want a Mullvad-style provider without the baggage, IVPN takes a similar no-email, minimal-data approach.

The uncomfortable takeaway

This story is a good reminder that a VPN is never just software. It is a company, and a company is people with their own money and their own politics. Audits tell you whether a provider keeps logs. They cannot tell you where the owner sends his personal fortune.

Mullvad handled the disclosure about as well as a company can: no spin, a founder willing to criticize his own co-owner in public, and refunds on request. Whether that is enough is a question only you can answer, because the thing that broke here is not the encryption. It is the trust.