Förskola and school for newly arrived families in Sweden

You have been in the kommun for two weeks, the flat is half unpacked, and the six-year-old is asking when school starts. Two deadlines are already running, and one of them only starts when you do something. The förskola clock begins on the date of your application, so the most useful thing you can do this week is send it.

Förskola: the four-month clock starts on your application

Förskola is for children aged one to five. It is not compulsory, and it is the one part of this article where you have to act rather than wait.

Skollagen says it plainly in 8 kap. 14 §: when a guardian has notified the kommun of a wish for förskola, the child must be offered a place within four months. A child who needs special support in their development must be offered a place promptly.

So apply in week one, even if you have not yet decided where you will live in the kommun, and even if the personnummer has not arrived. Ask for written confirmation of the application date, because that date is the only thing the four months are counted from.

From the autumn term of the year a child turns three, they are offered at least 525 hours a year free of charge, whatever the parents are doing. A fee may only be charged for the hours beyond those 525.

The Haddad family lands in Uppsala on 15 September 2026 with a three-year-old and a six-year-old. They register the förskola application on 22 September, which means the kommun must offer a place by 22 January 2027 at the latest. In the same week they write to the school office about the older child, and the school receives him in early October, which starts a separate two-month clock.

What förskola costs after 1 July 2026

The maxtaxa is a ceiling, not a price. The fee is a percentage of the household's fee-bearing income, capped in kronor.

For förskola the first child costs 3 per cent of that income, at most 1 547 kr a month; the second 2 per cent, at most 1 031 kr; the third 1 per cent, at most 516 kr; and from the fourth child there is no fee. The highest fee is paid for the youngest child.

Read the words fee-bearing carefully. The ceiling of 51 560 kr a month is the income after 10 000 kr has been deducted from the household total, so a household reaches the cap at roughly 61 560 kr a month gross, not at 51 560 kr.

Take the Haddads. Their household income is 48 000 kr a month. The first 10 000 kr is not counted, leaving 38 000 kr, so the three-year-old costs 3 per cent of that, 1 140 kr a month. If the six-year-old goes to fritidshem, that is 2 per cent of 38 000 kr, 760 kr. The kommun asks for your income and adjusts the fee afterwards, so report changes rather than waiting for the annual reconciliation.

Skolplikt, and the two months that decide the year group

Compulsory schooling starts in the autumn term of the calendar year the child turns six, in förskoleklass, and runs for ten years. School is free: no fees, and teaching materials and nutritious school meals at no cost. Occasional small costs, a bus ticket or a museum entry, are allowed, but not as a recurring charge.

For a newly arrived pupil the law adds a procedure. The rektor is responsible for assessing the pupil's knowledge, promptly, unless such an assessment is obviously unnecessary. The rektor must then decide the year group as soon as possible and at the latest within two months of the pupil being received into the school system, and place the pupil in the teaching group they will normally belong to within the same time.

Förberedelseklass, a preparatory class, is one option, and it comes with two limits. A pupil may be taught there only partly, never exclusively, and never for longer than two years in total. Schools are not required to have one at all.

Mother tongue: two rights, two different rules

These are constantly confused, and the difference matters when you are asking the school for something.

Studiehandledning på modersmålet is tutoring in the subject, in the pupil's own language. A pupil is entitled to it if the pupil needs it. There is no minimum number of pupils and no fixed limit on how long or how much.

Modersmålsundervisning is a subject in its own right, and it has conditions. The language must be the daily language of the home and the pupil must have basic knowledge of it, and the kommun only has to arrange it if at least five pupils want that language and a suitable teacher can be found. The five-pupil rule does not apply to the national minority languages: Finnish, Yiddish, Meänkieli, Romani chib and Sami.

Applying before the personnummer, and what to bring

Nothing here depends on being folkbokförd. The law asks whether the child is resident in the country in the sense of skollagen, and it says in so many words that some children count as resident even though they are not in the population register. Asylum-seeking children have the right to förskola on the same terms as registered children, and children who are in Sweden without a permit have the same right to school as children covered by skolplikt.

For asylum-seeking children there is a soft deadline: they should be received in school within a month of arrival. For everyone else no figure is set, only that it must happen as soon as possible and without unnecessary delay. Put your request in writing anyway, so there is a date to point at.

What we do not know yet

The reception rule for asylum-seeking children is written as a should, not a must, which makes it advice with the weight of a regulation rather than a deadline you can enforce. An amendment already decided replaces it from 1 October 2027 with two months from the day the application for protection was made. Until then, the practical lever is a written request and a polite reminder.

Kommuns also differ in ways no national page describes: queue systems, how a placement near home is handled when the school you want is full, and how quickly a school actually starts studiehandledning. Ask your own kommun for its routines in writing, and keep the answer with the application date.