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Although the national curriculum plays a crucial role in strengthening educational activities, research on national policies is scarce (Borg et al, 2021). Our study compares how democracy, play, and sustainability is addressed in preschool curricula in Sweden and Turkey. Studies revealed that sustainability is still not explicitly integrated into preschool curricula in many countries (Ärlemalm-Hagséret al., 2014; Elliott et al., 2015; Ohlsson et al., 2022). The study uses an integrated approach to sustainability where social, economic, and environmental dimensions are interdependent and interconnected (Elliott, 2023). The study is conducted within a qualitative research paradigm using critical content analysis (Cohen et al.,2018) to analyze, interpret and compare the content of text data. Although it is an analysis of curricula, ethical consideration has been given to ensuring fair representation of the literature to avoid the possibility of bias. It is expected that the results will contribute to the improvement of early childhood policy and practices and will benefit early childhood fields within wider society. The preliminary findings indicate that sustainability has explicitly been integrated in the Swedish curriculum, but Turkish curriculum mentioned only environmental sustainability. In Sweden, play is a core value for children’s learning where as in Turkey, play is mostly referred to as a methodology. Democracy is a core value of the Swedish curriculum, but the Turkish curriculum refers to “democracy” once in the whole text.  Our study contributes to create knowledge about policies and practices concerning preschool education in Sweden and Turkey focusing on democracy, play and sustainability.