A flexible repetitive control (RC) scheme named "dual-mode structure repetitive control" (DMRC) is presented in this article. A robust stability criterion for DMRC systems is derived in terms of two parameters: odd-harmonic RC gain and even-harmonic RC gain. Several useful corollaries for the stability are addressed to reveal the compatibility of DMRC. The general framework of DMRC offers the flexibility in the development of various RC controllers. Without additional complexity and loss of tracking accuracy, DMRC can achieve faster error convergence rate than conventional RCs. DMRC requires the same data memory size as that of conventional RC one. An application example of DMRC controlled PWM inverter illustrates the validity of our proposed DMRC scheme. Comparisons of DMRC, conventional RC and odd-harmonic RC highlight the advantages of the presented DMRC approach. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.