Schooling and childcare in Stockholm

The window that decides next August

The Stockholm school choice, skolval, runs from 15 January to 12 February for the following academic year. If you are unhappy with the place you are offered, the reserve-place window, reservplats, runs from 9 April to 6 May for the autumn term. Stockholm has roughly 300 primary school providers, municipal and independent, some of which set entrance tests, and compulsory schooling in Sweden lasts at least ten years. When a municipal school is oversubscribed the city allocates places using published selection criteria applied in order of priority, so the ranking you submit interacts with rules rather than with a head teacher.

• Get the current selection criteria from the city before you rank schools. How relative proximity and sibling priority are weighted against each other is not something to assume.
• Independent schools run their own admissions alongside the municipal process.

Arriving outside the window

There are also windows for a place once term has started, published for this school year as 1–15 October for a start on 3 November, 9–16 November for a start on 24 November, and 1–10 December for a start on 11 January 2027. If your child is newly arrived and has no school place at all, anywhere from preschool class to year 9, contact START Stockholm directly instead of waiting: 08-508 335 00, START-mottagning@edu.stockholm.se, Hammarby allé 150. The city's general school line is 08-508 11 550, open Monday to Thursday 08:00 to 16:30 and Friday 08:00 to 16:00, and the address is skola@stockholm.se.

Preschool, and what it costs

Once your förskola application is received the child is entitled to a place within three calendar months, so an application in January is guaranteed by April. Applications go through the Edlevo e-service or a paper form, and the city's contact centre takes preschool questions on 08-508 11 550 or forskola@stockholm.se. A child's queue date can be no earlier than their six-month birthday even if you apply before then, so applying very early buys an infant nothing. Fees follow maxtaxa: from 1 July 2026 the first child is 3 per cent of household income to a maximum of SEK 1,547 a month, the second 2 per cent to a maximum of SEK 1,031 and the third 1 per cent to a maximum of SEK 516, with the fourth and further children free.

• The income ceiling at which maxtaxa bites is SEK 61,560 a month, and from 1 July 2026 there is a new monthly income allowance, fribelopp, of SEK 10,000.
• The part-time band, for a child of one to three attending 30 hours a week or less, is 2 per cent to a maximum of SEK 1,031 for the first child and 1 per cent to a maximum of SEK 516 for the second and third.
• Allmän förskola gives 15 free hours a week during term from August of the year the child turns three, running to age five.

The international schools

The City of Stockholm lists seven international schools at compulsory level: the International School of the Stockholm Region, which is the municipal one, Futuraskolan International, Lycée Français Saint Louis, Stockholm International School, the International School of Kungsholmen, The Tanto International School and Tyska Skolan. They are formally intended for pupils staying in Sweden for a limited period or needing a curriculum other than the Swedish national one. They may charge fees for tuition and teaching materials, and the city says each school gives out its own fee information, so fees, admission deadlines and waiting lists come from the school directly rather than from the city. If your child may later move into a Swedish school or apply to upper secondary, check in advance how the curriculum maps onto Swedish requirements.