The two main official languages of Finland are Finnish and Swedish. There are also several official minority languages: three variants of Sami, as well as Romani, Finnish Sign Language, Finland-Swedish Sign Language and Karelian.

Finnish is the language of the majority, 85.7% of the population in 2022. It is a Finnic language closely related to Estonian and less closely to the Sami languages.

Swedish is the main language of 5.2% of the population in 2022 (92.4% in the Åland autonomous province), down from 14% at the beginning of the 20th century. In 2012, 44% of Finnish citizens with another registered primary language than Swedish could hold a conversation in this language. Swedish was the language of the administration until the late 19th century. Today it is one of the two main official languages, with a position equal to Finnish in most legislation, though the working language in most governmental bodies is Finnish. Both Finnish and Swedish are compulsory subjects in school with an exception for children with a third language as their native language. A successfully completed language test is a prerequisite for governmental offices where a university degree is required.

The four largest Swedish-speaking communities in Finland, in absolute numbers, are those of Helsinki, Espoo, Porvoo and Vaasa, where they constitute significant minorities. In Helsinki, currently 5.5% of the population are native Swedish speakers and 18.3% are native speakers of languages other than Finnish and Swedish.

The Swedish dialects spoken in Finland mainland are known as Finland-Swedish. There is a rich Finland-Swedish literature, including authors such as Tove Jansson, Johan Ludvig Runeberg, Edith Södergran and Zacharias Topelius. Runeberg is considered Finland's national poet and wrote the national anthem, "Vårt land", which was only later translated to Finnish.

Within language policy making in Finland, Taxell's paradox refers to the notion that monolingual solutions are essential to the realization of functional bilingualism, with multilingual solutions ultimately leading to monolingualism. The thinking is based on the observation of the Swedish language in environments such as schools is subordinated to the majority language Finnish for practical and social reasons, despite the positive characteristics associated with mutual language learning.

English is spoken as a foreign language by most Finns. Official statistics from 2012 show that at least 70% of Finns can speak English. English is the native language of 0.5% of the Finnish population.

The Sami languages are a group of related languages spoken across Sápmi. They are distantly related to Finnish. The three Sami languages spoken in Finland, Northern Sami, Inari Sami and Skolt Sami, have a combined native speaker population of only 2,035 in 2022 albeit there are more than 10,000 Sami people in Finland. The state of Finland has a history of aiming to assimilate the indigenous Sámi people to the Finnish-speaking majority.