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The NextGen bar exam passing score runs on a 500 to 750 scale, so no jurisdiction's old number carries across untranslated. NCBE recommends 610 to 620 and maps the legacy 260, 266 and 270 to 610, 616 and 620. Twenty-five jurisdictions had set a score as of July 27, 2026.
It depends on your jurisdiction, and 25 of them had set one at the time of verification (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/minimum-passing-scores). The rest had not.
NCBE's recommended range is 610 to 620, published in a Guidance Brief in November 2025 (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-11/FOR%20RELEASE%20NCBE%20NextGen%20Guidance%20Brief-Recommended%20Passing%20Score%20Range-2.pdf).
Every score set so far falls inside or at the edge of that range, from 610 to 620.
NextGen passing scoreJurisdictionsCount610Iowa, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, Washington5612Guam, Palau2614Indiana1615Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon (July 2026 only)2616Connecticut, District of Columbia, Idaho, Kentucky, Maryland, Virgin Islands6620Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont9
Scores set as of July 27, 2026, from NCBE's NextGen minimum passing scores page (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/minimum-passing-scores). NCBE states on that page that additional jurisdictions are currently evaluating the recommended range, so this is a snapshot rather than a final list.
NextGen scores are reported as a single number on a 500 to 750 scale, and each jurisdiction sets its own passing score inside that range (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/nextgen-ube-scores-score-portability).
The score is built from three weighted components: 49 percent standalone multiple-choice, 21 percent integrated question sets and 30 percent performance tasks.
NextGen is equated, so a score earned in any jurisdiction at any administration has the same meaning as any other NextGen score. That is what makes it portable.
No, and this is the single most common misunderstanding about the transition. The scales are different, so no jurisdiction's legacy number carries across untranslated.
NCBE published a mapping instead. At each anchor the offset is a flat plus 350: a legacy 260 maps to 610, 266 to 616 and 270 to 620 (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-11/FOR%20RELEASE%20NCBE%20NextGen%20Guidance%20Brief-Recommended%20Passing%20Score%20Range-2.pdf).
Do not extrapolate outside those three anchors. NCBE published a mapping table rather than a general conversion formula, so there is no published equivalent for, say, a 264.
Legacy UBE scoreMapped NextGen equivalent260610266616270620
This is the caveat that most summaries drop, and it changes how much weight the numbers can bear.
The mapping rests on a concordance study using July 2024 prototype data plus standard-setting judgments from more than 80 panelists across 43 jurisdictions (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-11/FOR%20RELEASE%20NCBE%20NextGen%20Guidance%20Brief-Recommended%20Passing%20Score%20Range-2.pdf).
NCBE cautions in its own brief that prototype data will not perfectly reflect operational performance. So this is a recommended concordance, not a psychometric equating of two exams.
Most jurisdictions picked the mapped equivalent of their legacy score, which means NextGen is not changing stringency in most places. Two moved.
Illinois was 266 on legacy and set 620, the equivalent of 270. Oregon set a one-time 615 for July 2026 only before moving to 620.
A separate category worth catching, because it is easy to misread as a full adoption decision.
Arizona at 620, Minnesota at 620, South Dakota at 620, Utah at 610, West Virginia at 620 and Wyoming at 620 have set only a minimum for accepting a TRANSFERRED NextGen score (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/nextgen-ube-scores-score-portability/nextgen-ube-decisions-jurisdiction).
None of those six has set a passing score for its own NextGen administration yet, because none of them administers NextGen until 2027 or 2028.
Twenty-seven jurisdictions had set no NextGen passing score at verification, and that includes every large late adopter: California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin among them. For each of those the honest answer is not yet published by the board.
NCBE has published no NextGen mean and no standard deviation. Both are absent from the Guidance Brief, the Examinees' Guide, the Blueprint and every scoring page.
NCBE has also published no NextGen-specific score validity rule. Its maximum score age chart covers the legacy UBE only (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/ube/ube-maximum-score-age), so existing jurisdiction windows apply unchanged until a board says otherwise.
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.
Which also means there is no NextGen pass rate to compare a cut score against. A cut score is a policy choice; a pass rate is an outcome, and no outcomes exist yet.
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 bar exam passing score by state and what is the nextgen bar exam.
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 NextGen passing scores 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.
It varies by jurisdiction. Twenty-five had set one at verification, all between 610 and 620, against an NCBE recommended range of 610 to 620.
A single number on a 500 to 750 scale, built from 49 percent multiple-choice, 21 percent integrated question sets and 30 percent performance tasks, equated so scores mean the same thing across jurisdictions and administrations.
Not directly. NCBE published a mapping at a flat plus 350 offset, so 260 maps to 610, 266 to 616 and 270 to 620. It is a recommended concordance from prototype data, not a psychometric equating.
Twenty-seven, including California, Florida, New York, Texas and Virginia. For those the answer is not yet published by the board rather than an estimate.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026