Sweden has 1,272 active upper-secondary school units across 249 municipalities. Upper-secondary education is voluntary, so the number of schools says nothing on its own about how many places each programme offers.
817 are run by a municipality or a municipal federation and 443 by an independent operator. Admission is largely shared regardless of operator — most programmes are applied for through a regional upper-secondary admissions service. A further 12 units have another or unknown operator type and are reported separately.
Upper-secondary schools are far more unevenly spread than compulsory schools: many municipalities have none at all and send their pupils to a neighbouring one, while the metropolitan regions hold a large share of the units.
The register is a moving target: Skolverket adds new school units and deregisters closed ones continuously, so the figure changes between school years and even within one. Skolkoll syncs the register weekly and every count on this page is recomputed from that sync.
- Municipally run817
- Independent443
- Other operator type12
- Municipalities with an upper-secondary school249
Data from Skolverket + Skolkoll calculation. Last updated 2026-10-06. Spot any errors? Submit a correction.