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Screening in Estonia
Estonia runs three organised cancer screening programmes. The target group is rebuilt every year from birth years, the invitation arrives as state e-mail or a paper letter, and it is free whether or not you have health insurance.
This page describes screening programmes; it is not a diagnosis, not a personal risk assessment and not a substitute for your own health service. Age bands are set nationally and change — the invitation you receive, and the body named on your country page, outrank anything written here. Screening is for people without symptoms: a new lump, blood you can see, a mole that has changed, unexplained weight loss or a sudden change in vision or hearing needs a clinician now, whatever a recent screening result said.
The programmes
| Programme | Who | Age band and interval | Test | How it reaches you |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Breast cancer screening (mammography) | Women | 50–74, every 2 years | Mammography | Invitation |
| Cervical screening (HPV test) | Women | 30–65, every 5 years | HPV test, home kit available | Invitation |
| Bowel cancer screening (stool test) | Everyone | 56–68, every 2 years | Faecal occult blood test | Invitation |
Who decides you are due
Estonia does not wait for you to ask. The cancer screening register at the National Institute for Health Development (Tervise Arengu Instituut) builds a target group for each programme once a year out of the population register, and it does it by birth year rather than by your birthday. That is why the answer to "am I due?" is a year, not a date: a woman born in an even year and a woman born the following January can be twelve months apart in the queue. Tervisekassa then pays for the round and sends the invitations.
How the invitation reaches you
If you have set an e-mail forwarding address in the state portal, the invitation arrives as an eesti.ee notification. If you have not, it is printed and posted to the address in the population register — which is the single most common reason people say they were never invited. An out-of-date address in the register is invisible until the year you need it. The invitation is not a booking: for mammography you ring the imaging unit named in the letter and pick a slot; for the bowel test you go to your family practice and the nurse hands you the kit.
What is on offer
Three programmes, and only three. Mammography for women from 50 to 74 every two years; a cervical HPV test for women from 30 to 65 every five years, with the option of a self-taken home kit rather than a speculum appointment; and a faecal occult blood test for everyone from 56 to 68 every two years, collected at home and posted to the laboratory. All three are free for people in that year’s target group whether or not they hold health insurance, which is unusual in the Estonian system and worth knowing if you are between jobs.
What is not a programme yet
Lung and prostate screening are being piloted in Estonia, not offered nationally, and personalised risk-based breast screening is in development. Treat any PSA test you have had as an individual decision taken with a doctor rather than as a national programme, because that is what it is. A pilot can be a good thing to join; it is not something that will arrive in your post automatically.
If nothing arrived
Check your birth year against the current target groups on Tervisekassa’s screening site, then take part anyway if you are in it — you do not have to hold the letter. Results appear in the patient portal: mammography images are usually reported within about a fortnight, the laboratory posts the stool result, and a positive stool test is a referral to colonoscopy, not a diagnosis. If your address or e-mail in the population register is wrong, fixing it is a five-minute job that changes the next ten years of invitations.
Age by age
The same table again, turned around: every age at which something falls due, so you can find your own and read across. This is rendered on the server, so it works whether or not the calculator below does.
Women: the age ladder
| Age | What is due |
|---|---|
| 30 | Cervical screening (HPV test) — HPV test, home kit available |
| 35 | Cervical screening (HPV test) — HPV test, home kit available |
| 40 | Cervical screening (HPV test) — HPV test, home kit available |
| 45 | Cervical screening (HPV test) — HPV test, home kit available |
| 50 | Breast cancer screening (mammography) — Mammography; Cervical screening (HPV test) — HPV test, home kit available |
| 52 | Breast cancer screening (mammography) — Mammography |
| 54 | Breast cancer screening (mammography) — Mammography |
| 55 | Cervical screening (HPV test) — HPV test, home kit available |
| 56 | Breast cancer screening (mammography) — Mammography; Bowel cancer screening (stool test) — Faecal occult blood test |
| 58 | Breast cancer screening (mammography) — Mammography; Bowel cancer screening (stool test) — Faecal occult blood test |
| 60 | Breast cancer screening (mammography) — Mammography; Cervical screening (HPV test) — HPV test, home kit available; Bowel cancer screening (stool test) — Faecal occult blood test |
| 62 | Breast cancer screening (mammography) — Mammography; Bowel cancer screening (stool test) — Faecal occult blood test |
| 64 | Breast cancer screening (mammography) — Mammography; Bowel cancer screening (stool test) — Faecal occult blood test |
| 65 | Cervical screening (HPV test) — HPV test, home kit available |
| 66 | Breast cancer screening (mammography) — Mammography; Bowel cancer screening (stool test) — Faecal occult blood test |
| 68 | Breast cancer screening (mammography) — Mammography; Bowel cancer screening (stool test) — Faecal occult blood test |
| 70 | Breast cancer screening (mammography) — Mammography |
| 72 | Breast cancer screening (mammography) — Mammography |
| 74 | Breast cancer screening (mammography) — Mammography |
Men: the age ladder
| Age | What is due |
|---|---|
| 56 | Bowel cancer screening (stool test) — Faecal occult blood test |
| 58 | Bowel cancer screening (stool test) — Faecal occult blood test |
| 60 | Bowel cancer screening (stool test) — Faecal occult blood test |
| 62 | Bowel cancer screening (stool test) — Faecal occult blood test |
| 64 | Bowel cancer screening (stool test) — Faecal occult blood test |
| 66 | Bowel cancer screening (stool test) — Faecal occult blood test |
| 68 | Bowel cancer screening (stool test) — Faecal occult blood test |
Where an interval is set regionally, only the age the band opens is listed — the country’s own body publishes the repeat interval. Ages are the age you reach in the calendar year, because target groups across the region are built from birth years rather than birth dates.
Work out your own years
Your own timeline
Enter a birth year and the table below fills in with every invitation that country expects to send you, and the calendar year each one is due. Nothing is sent anywhere — the whole calculation happens in this page.
JavaScript is off, so the timeline is not calculated here. The age ladders on each country page below are the same information rendered on the server — find your age and read across.
The calendar file contains one all-day reminder per invitation, in the month you were born, for the years still ahead. It is a prompt to expect a letter, not the letter itself.
Sources: Tervisekassa — screening target groups and invitations (soeluuring.ee) · Tervisekassa — breast cancer screening · Tervisekassa — cervical cancer screening · Sõeluuring.ee — breast screening target group and what the appointment involves · Tervise Arengu Instituut — Cancer Screening Register · checked 2026-09-07
Frequently asked questions
At what age does breast screening start in Estonia?
At 50. Women aged 50 to 74 are invited to mammography every two years, and the target group for each year is defined by birth year, so the first invitation lands in the calendar year your cohort comes up rather than on your fiftieth birthday.
Do I need health insurance to be screened in Estonia?
No. Participation in the breast, cervical and bowel programmes is free for people in that year’s target group whether or not they are insured. This is a deliberate exception to the usual rule that Estonian care follows insurance.
I never got an invitation — what now?
The commonest cause is an address or e-mail forwarding setting in the population register that is out of date, because a paper invitation goes to the registered address. Check your birth year against the current target group, contact Tervisekassa or your family practice, and take part without the letter if you are eligible.
Can I do the cervical test at home in Estonia?
Yes. A self-taken HPV kit can be ordered to your home or collected, used without a clinic appointment and posted back. It tests for the high-risk virus types; a positive result is followed up with a clinic examination.
The tests you will be invited to
Breast cancer screening (mammography)
An X-ray of each breast, read by two radiologists, repeated every two years across a band of ages that starts at 40 in Sweden and 50 almost everywhere else. What it finds, what it misses and what a call-back means.
Cervical screening (HPV test)
Almost every country in the region has switched from looking for abnormal cells to looking for the virus that causes them. The test is better, so the gap between tests is longer — and in several countries you can now take the sample yourself.
Bowel cancer screening (stool test)
A sample from one bowel movement, taken at home and posted. It is the only screening programme in the region that routinely prevents cancers rather than only finding them early — because the follow-up removes the polyp.
The other countries
Age bands differ across the region by up to a decade for the same programme, so a comparison is genuinely useful — particularly if you have moved, or if family live elsewhere.
Finland · Latvia · Lithuania · Sweden · Norway · Denmark
The whole regional tableHow invitations work
Between the letters, keep your own record
A screening invitation arrives every few years. TempoLife keeps the rest — weight, blood pressure, sleep and the notes you want to find again — so the next appointment starts with facts rather than guesses.