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NextGen bar exam states, current as of July 27, 2026: 52 of 56 jurisdictions have adopted, 51 with a date set. Ten began in July 2026, thirteen follow in July 2027, four in February 2028 and twenty-four in July 2028. Four have not adopted, and only Nevada has actually declined.
Fifty-two of the 56 US jurisdictions have announced adoption (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/nextgen-ube-scores-score-portability/nextgen-ube-decisions-jurisdiction). Fifty-one of those have a first administration date. Mississippi adopted by order dated July 18, 2025 and has set no date (https://www.ncbex.org/news-resources/mississippi-supreme-court-orders-adoption-nextgen-ube).
Four have made no announcement: Arkansas, Louisiana, Nevada and Puerto Rico. Only one of those four is a refusal.
Nevada is the sole affirmative declination, and its own page says so in those words: Nevada has not adopted the NextGen Bar Exam (https://nvbar.org/nvplan/). Arkansas, Louisiana and Puerto Rico are labeled by NCBE as 'No Announcement Regarding NextGen UBE', which is silence rather than a no.
One reading trap worth knowing. A NextGen field reading 'No' on an NCBE jurisdiction page means the jurisdiction does not currently administer it, not that it declined. Montana reads 'No' despite having an adoption order.
Four cohorts, and they are lopsided. Ten jurisdictions began in July 2026, thirteen follow in July 2027, four in February 2028 and twenty-four in July 2028 (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/nextgen-ube-scores-score-portability/nextgen-ube-decisions-jurisdiction).
The July 2026 group is Connecticut, Idaho, Maryland, Missouri, Oregon, Washington, plus Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Virgin Islands.
A precision note on that group, because the common framing is wrong. Only three of the ten are US territories. Palau is a sovereign nation in a Compact of Free Association with the United States that NCBE counts as a US jurisdiction, and it was never a UBE jurisdiction, so it has no last-UBE date at all (https://www.ncbex.org/news-resources/palau-administer-nextgen-ube-beginning-july-2026).
July 2028 is the single largest cohort and more than half of all adopters land in 2028. If you are a current 1L or 2L in most of the country, that is your cohort.
JurisdictionFirst NextGen administrationWhat it uses nowLast traditional administrationAlabamaJuly 2028Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardAlaskaJuly 2028Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardArizonaJuly 2027Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardArkansasNo announcementLegacy UBENot yet published by the boardCaliforniaJuly 2028California Bar ExamNot yet published by the boardColoradoJuly 2028Legacy UBEFebruary 2028ConnecticutJuly 2026NextGen from July 2026Not yet published by the boardDelawareFebruary 2028Delaware state examNot yet published by the boardDistrict of ColumbiaFebruary 2028Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardFloridaJuly 2028Florida Bar ExamNot yet published by the boardGeorgiaJuly 2028MBE plus MPT plus Georgia essaysNot yet published by the boardGuamJuly 2026NextGen from July 2026February 2026HawaiiJuly 2028MBE, MEE, MPT plus Hawaii ethics examNot yet published by the boardIdahoJuly 2026NextGen from July 2026February 2026IllinoisFebruary 2028Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardIndianaJuly 2028Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardIowaJuly 2027Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardKansasJuly 2028Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardKentuckyJuly 2027Legacy UBEFebruary 2027LouisianaNo announcementLouisiana state examNot yet published by the boardMaineJuly 2028Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardMarylandJuly 2026NextGen from July 2026Not yet published by the boardMassachusettsJuly 2028Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardMichiganJuly 2028Legacy UBE plus Michigan componentNot yet published by the boardMinnesotaJuly 2027Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardMississippiAdopted, date not setState exam using MBE, MEE, MPTNot yet published by the boardMissouriJuly 2026NextGen from July 2026Not yet published by the boardMontanaFebruary 2028Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardNebraskaJuly 2027Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardNevadaDeclinedNevada state exam to Nevada PlanNot yet published by the boardNew HampshireJuly 2028Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardNew JerseyJuly 2028Legacy UBEFebruary 2028New MexicoJuly 2027Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardNew YorkJuly 2028Legacy UBE plus NYLC and NYLENot yet published by the boardNorth CarolinaJuly 2028Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardNorth DakotaJuly 2027Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardNorthern Mariana IslandsJuly 2026NextGen from July 2026Not yet published by the boardOhioJuly 2028Legacy UBEFebruary 2028OklahomaJuly 2027Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardOregonJuly 2026NextGen from July 2026Not yet published by the boardPalauJuly 2026NextGen from July 2026Not yet published by the boardPennsylvaniaJuly 2028Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardPuerto RicoNo announcementRevalída General and NotarialNot yet published by the boardRhode IslandJuly 2028Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardSouth CarolinaJuly 2028Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardSouth DakotaJuly 2027Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardTennesseeJuly 2027Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardTexasJuly 2028Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardUtahJuly 2028Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardVermontJuly 2027Legacy UBEFebruary 2027Virgin IslandsJuly 2026NextGen from July 2026Not yet published by the boardVirginiaJuly 2028Virginia state examNot yet published by the boardWashingtonJuly 2026NextGen from July 2026February 2026West VirginiaJuly 2027Legacy UBENot yet published by the boardWisconsinJuly 2028Legacy UBE from July 2026Not yet published by the boardWyomingNo sooner than July 2027Legacy UBENot yet published by the board
Rollout status from NCBE's decisions-by-jurisdiction table (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/nextgen-ube-scores-score-portability/nextgen-ube-decisions-jurisdiction) and each jurisdiction's own order or board page where one was reachable. Verified July 27, 2026.
Nearly all of them, and that is the fact most readers actually need. Forty-six jurisdictions were still administering the legacy UBE or a state exam at the July 2026 sitting.
The legacy UBE itself has a published end date. The MBE, MEE and MPT, and therefore the UBE built from them, are available through the February 2028 administration and then sunset (https://www.ncbex.org/news-resources/update-nextgen-exam-content-extends-availability).
Three jurisdictions are changing from something other than the UBE. Florida, Georgia and Virginia adopt NextGen in July 2028 from state-drafted exams, each retaining a state component (https://www.floridabarexam.org/static/20240718_Press_Release_re_Florida_Bar_Examination.pdf).
Wisconsin is the outlier case. It only became a UBE jurisdiction in July 2026 and adopts NextGen in July 2028, so it changes exam format twice in two years while diploma privilege stays intact (https://www.wicourts.gov/sc/rulhear/DisplayDocument.pdf?content=pdf&seqNo=1096782).
NCBE's own two pages disagreed on California at the moment of verification, and this page states the conflict rather than picking a side silently.
The decisions-by-jurisdiction table, stamped July 9, 2026, still listed California as not adopted. The California Supreme Court approved NextGen on July 15, 2026 for July 2028 (https://supreme.courts.ca.gov/news-and-events/california-supreme-court-approves-adoption-nextgen-uniform-bar-exam), and NCBE's NextGen landing page reflected it.
We publish the California Supreme Court order as operative, because a court's own order outranks a compilation table that has not caught up. Anyone citing the decisions table alone gets California wrong.
California also plans a California-specific component no earlier than July 2029, and warns there may be no Attorneys' Exam in July 2028 or February 2029 (https://supreme.courts.ca.gov/news-and-events/california-supreme-court-approves-adoption-nextgen-uniform-bar-exam).
Texas is the largest gap on this table. Its July 2028 date rests on ncbex.org alone, and the word NextGen appears nowhere on ble.texas.gov or txcourts.gov, including a rulebook effective January 6, 2026 and a roughly 200-item FAQ. Treat the Texas date as not yet published by the Texas Board of Law Examiners.
The same applies to South Carolina, Alaska, Hawaii, Indiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, Palau, New Mexico and Mississippi, where the date rests on NCBE alone. Several of those sites are unreachable rather than silent: sccourts.org and courts.ms.gov are robots-blocked and courts.michigan.gov serves a JavaScript-only shell.
Last traditional administration dates are unstated by 48 of the 56 boards. Only Idaho, Washington and Guam (February 2026), Kentucky and Vermont (February 2027), and Colorado, New Jersey and Ohio (February 2028) have said theirs. Every other date in circulation is calendar arithmetic rather than a board's own pronouncement, so this table reads not yet published rather than guessing.
Wyoming is the one genuine wording discrepancy. NCBE lists a firm July 2027; Wyoming's own supreme court release says no sooner than July 2027 (https://www.wyocourts.gov/app/uploads/2025/05/NextGen-Press-Release.pdf). We publish Wyoming's own wording.
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 what is the nextgen bar exam and when is the last ube administration? the february 2028 sunset.
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.
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.
That matters on this page specifically, because the transition is the reason any of it is moving. Structure, dates and published policy are reportable now; outcomes are not.
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.
Find your own jurisdiction in the table above and open its source link, because that is the only authority on your date.
If your jurisdiction is in the 2028 cohort, your planning question is not NextGen at all yet. It is which legacy administrations remain, and our page on the February 2028 sunset covers that.
Diarise a September re-check. That is when boards most often post the next cycle.
Everything on this page about this page 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.
Fifty-two of 56. Fifty-one have a first administration date and Mississippi has adopted without setting one. Arkansas, Louisiana, Nevada and Puerto Rico have not adopted, and only Nevada has affirmatively declined.
Ten jurisdictions started in July 2026, thirteen follow in July 2027, four in February 2028 and twenty-four in July 2028. More than half of all adopters land in 2028.
Forty-six jurisdictions were still on the legacy UBE or a state exam at the July 2026 sitting. The legacy UBE ends after the February 2028 administration.
Yes, and that is why it carries a date. Supreme courts issue orders and NCBE's pages lag them; the California order beat NCBE's own table by six days. Re-check your board directly.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026