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The last UBE administration is February 2028. NCBE states that the last administration of the current bar exam, meaning the MBE, MEE and MPT, will be February 2028, and it moved that date once from July 2027. Only eight boards have stated their own last traditional sitting.
February 2028. NCBE's Comprehensive Guide states that the last administration of the current bar exam will be the February 2028 administration (https://www.ncbex.org/news-resources/update-nextgen-exam-content-extends-availability).
That covers the MBE, MEE and MPT as components, and therefore the legacy UBE built from them.
There is a trap in the date. NCBE moved it once, announcing July 2027 on August 28, 2023 and extending to February 2028 on October 25, 2023 (https://www.ncbex.org/news-resources/ncbe-announces-nextgen-exam-structure-sunset-current-bar-exam). Several state press releases from 2023 to 2025 still quote the superseded July 2027 date, so cite NCBE rather than the state release for this figure.
For you specifically, whichever comes first: your jurisdiction's own switchover date, or February 2028.
Only eight boards have stated their own last traditional administration. Idaho, Washington and Guam said February 2026.
Kentucky and Vermont said February 2027. Colorado, New Jersey and Ohio said February 2028 (https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-5/).
For the other 48 the answer is not yet published by the board. Every other last-UBE date in circulation is calendar arithmetic from published schedules, and we do not publish arithmetic as though it were a pronouncement.
JurisdictionLast traditional administration, officially statedColoradoFebruary 2028GuamFebruary 2026IdahoFebruary 2026KentuckyFebruary 2027New JerseyFebruary 2028OhioFebruary 2028VermontFebruary 2027WashingtonFebruary 2026
The eight jurisdictions that have stated their own date. Everywhere else the board has not published one. Verified July 27, 2026.
You count backwards from your jurisdiction's switchover, and this is the real question behind the query.
If your jurisdiction goes NextGen in July 2027, a February 2027 first attempt leaves you exactly one traditional retake before the format changes under you.
If it goes in July 2028, you have more room, but the global February 2028 sunset still caps the legacy exam regardless of what your board has announced.
The planning move is to check two dates, not one: your board's switchover, and February 2028. Whichever is earlier is your real deadline for a legacy attempt.
Nevada's July 2026 exam was the last administration of the traditional Nevada bar exam ever, and nothing replaces it with NextGen (https://nvbar.org/nvplan/).
From February 2027 Nevada licenses through the Nevada Comprehensive Licensing Examination, built from the MPRE, a Foundational Law Exam, a Lawyering Performance Exam and a Supervised Practice Program.
The regime was ordered in ADKT 0594 on May 23, 2025 with rules effective January 19, 2026. The first Foundational Law Exam was administered May 28 and 29, 2026 and the first Lawyering Performance Exam is January 19, 2027.
A legacy UBE score does not die at the sunset. It stays transferable into NextGen jurisdictions subject to each one's own validity window (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/nextgen-ube-scores-score-portability).
NCBE states that in most jurisdictions qualifying scores from both the legacy UBE and NextGen will be accepted for transfer, so a February 2028 pass is not stranded.
What does expire is the window itself, which runs from two years to five depending on the jurisdiction (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/ube/ube-maximum-score-age). That is the clock to watch after the sunset, not the sunset.
One framing point that governs this whole page. The first NextGen administration was July 28 and 29, 2026 (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen), so at the time of writing no NextGen exam had been sat anywhere in the world and no results existed. There is no NextGen pass rate, no score distribution, no repeater data and no retrospective on how it went, and anyone offering you one is inventing it.
And no one can tell you whether switching cohorts helps or hurts, because there is no NextGen outcome data to compare against legacy outcomes.
NCBE has not published a NextGen mean or standard deviation either. The figures are absent from the Guidance Brief, the Examinees' Guide, the Blueprint and every scoring page (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-11/FOR%20RELEASE%20NCBE%20NextGen%20Guidance%20Brief-Recommended%20Passing%20Score%20Range-2.pdf), which is worth knowing before you read anyone's confident claim about difficulty.
This page is one spoke of a cluster. The hub is our NextGen bar exam pillar, which carries the whole transition in one place and links every spoke including this one.
The two most closely related pages here are nextgen bar exam states and transfer nextgen score to ube state.
Everything across the cluster is drawn from the same verified fact set and carries the same verified-as-of date, so the numbers agree with each other by construction rather than by coincidence.
Every fact here was read on NCBE's own pages or the jurisdiction's own board or supreme court pages on July 27, 2026. No prep company, no aggregator, no forum and no news summary was used as a source for anything.
Where a jurisdiction's own site was unreachable, robots-blocked or JavaScript-gated, we say the fact rests on NCBE alone rather than presenting it as confirmed. That happened more often than you would expect and it is named on the page each time.
Where two official sources disagree, we publish the conflict and name which one we treat as operational. We do not pick quietly and we do not average them.
Where nothing is published, the page says not yet published by the board. It never says a number we worked out ourselves, because an estimate that looks like a disclosure is worse than a gap.
It cannot tell you what your own board will do. Jurisdictions set their own dates, fees, cut scores, deadlines and admission rules, and NCBE compiles those decisions rather than making them.
It cannot substitute for reading your jurisdiction's rule text. Compilation charts are an index into the rules, not the rules, and every material decision should be checked against the authority itself.
The first is adoption. Supreme courts issue orders on their own schedule and NCBE's compilation pages lag them, which is exactly what happened with California in July 2026.
The second is the calendar. Most jurisdictions had not posted 2027 dates or 2027 fees at verification, and several were serving prior-cycle pages without saying so.
The third is cut scores. NCBE states on its own page that jurisdictions are currently evaluating its recommended NextGen range (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/minimum-passing-scores), so that list grows month by month.
None of those three settles before autumn. Treat September as the re-check point for anything on this page that carries a date or a number.
Start at NCBE's jurisdiction index (https://www.ncbex.org/jurisdictions) to find the name of your admitting authority, which is often not the state bar association and is sometimes a board sitting under the supreme court.
Then go to that authority's own site and look for a dated page. A page with no cycle label is the warning sign, not the exception; several boards serve prior-cycle information with no year on it anywhere.
Cross-check the deadlines page against the program page, because they disagree more often than they should. We found boards contradicting themselves on dates in the same week.
If the two disagree and you cannot tell which is current, email the board and keep the reply. A dated email from the board is better evidence than any table, including this one.
Open your own jurisdiction's board page and confirm every date and number on this page against it.
Where this page says not yet published, check again in September, which is when most boards refresh.
If your plan turns on a figure here, get it from the board in writing rather than from any table.
Everything on this page about the transition timeline was read on the source pages listed inline on July 27, 2026, and the date is on the page rather than buried in a footer because this material moves faster than anything else we publish.
Three separate clocks are running against it. Supreme courts issue adoption orders and NCBE's own pages lag them.
Most jurisdictions had not posted 2027 dates or fees. NextGen passing scores are being set jurisdiction by jurisdiction right now, and NCBE says so on its own page (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/minimum-passing-scores).
Re-check your own jurisdiction's board before you rely on any date or number here, including ours. A figure quoted anywhere without a cycle label and a date attached is unverified by definition.
February 2028. NCBE states the last administration of the current bar exam will be February 2028, covering the MBE, MEE and MPT.
For you, whichever comes first: your board's switchover date or February 2028. Only eight boards have stated their own last date; for the other 48 it is not yet published.
Count backwards from your jurisdiction's switchover and from February 2028, whichever is earlier. If your jurisdiction goes NextGen in July 2027, a February 2027 attempt leaves one traditional retake.
Yes, once. NCBE announced July 2027 in August 2023 and extended it to February 2028 in October 2023. Some state releases still quote the old date.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026