This paper analyses reforms and experiments of Swedish up¬per secondary education over a 40-year period, add¬ressing and/or affecting curriculum organisation and contents. Major trends, conflicting tendencies and driving forces are analysed, with a focus on the develop¬ment of the 1990s and 2000s. Themes include: - comprehensiveness and late specialisation as a general theme of the reforms of the late 1960s and the early 1990s, versus demands on clearer division between voca¬tional preparation and apprenticeship training and academic preparation - universalism and standardisation – a national core of knowledge and contents common to all students – versus local fragmentation and individual programmes and projects - education of flexible and responsible workers and citizens, e.g. by introducing project/ thematic work and cross-disciplinary teacher teams versus old and new demands of strong classification between school subjects, teacher categories and time units - marketisation of upper secondary education and its curriculum in the 1990s and 2000s, reflected e.g. in a motley offering of courses, programs and profiles at upper secondary level and the promotion of enterprising as part of the curriculum. The paper emanates from a research project Upper-secondary school as a marketplace, funded by the Swedish Research Council.