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What is the NextGen bar exam: nine hours across three three-hour sessions over one and a half days, replacing the MBE, MEE and MPT with one integrated exam scored 500 to 750. Every session mixes multiple-choice, integrated question sets and a performance task. Verified against NCBE on July 27, 2026.
A nine-hour examination across three three-hour sessions over one and a half days, administered on the last Tuesday and Wednesday of February and July (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/about-nextgen).
It replaces the MBE, MEE and MPT with a single integrated exam that tests eight foundational concepts and seven foundational lawyering skills, scored on a 500 to 750 scale (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/nextgen-ube-scores-score-portability).
It is fully computer-based. Examinees test on their own laptops using NCBE's secure testing browser, where the legacy UBE used printed materials and Scantrons (https://www.ncbex.org/news-resources/ncbe-announces-nextgen-exam-structure-sunset-current-bar-exam).
The single biggest structural change is that every session mixes all three question types. There is no longer a dedicated multiple-choice day or an essay day (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-06/NCBE-NextGen-UBE-Blueprint.pdf).
Each of the three sections contains about 40 standalone multiple-choice questions, two integrated question sets and one performance task (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-06/NCBE-NextGen-UBE-Blueprint.pdf).
Across the whole exam that is 120 standalone multiple-choice questions, six integrated question sets and three performance tasks.
Not all of it counts. Twenty of the 120 multiple-choice questions and one of the six integrated sets are unscored pretest items, leaving 100 scored multiple-choice questions and five scored sets.
ComponentTotal on the examScoredNCBE pacing targetStandalone multiple-choice120100About 1.8 minutes eachIntegrated question sets6524 minutes eachPerformance tasks33About one hour eachSessions333 hours each, 9 hours total
Counts and pacing targets from the NCBE NextGen UBE Blueprint (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-06/NCBE-NextGen-UBE-Blueprint.pdf). Verified July 27, 2026.
Three, and two of them have no clean legacy analogue.
Multiple-choice comes in two formats: select one of four options, and select two of six options. The second format is new relative to the MBE (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/sample-questions).
Integrated question sets contain multiple-choice, medium-answer and short-answer questions built off a shared fact pattern. They split into counseling sets, which pair multiple-choice with short answer, and drafting sets, which ask one medium-length question (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2026-01/NCBE_NextGen_UBE_Constructed_Response_Guide.pdf).
Performance tasks come in two varieties. Standard tasks give you a File and a Library and ask for one extended writing assignment. Legal Research Performance Tasks add multiple-choice and short-answer research questions plus a medium-length writing assignment, which makes legal research a directly tested skill rather than an assumed one (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/sample-questions).
All constructed responses receive double grading, meaning two independent graders per response (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2026-01/NCBE_NextGen_UBE_Constructed_Response_Guide.pdf).
Short answers are graded 0 to 2 with partial credit available. Performance tasks are typically graded 0 to 4.
NCBE has not published the number of short-answer items across the exam, nor the number of items inside an individual integrated question set. Both are not yet published by NCBE.
NCBE contradicts itself on which day carries two sessions, and the conflict was live at verification, so we name the operational source rather than choosing quietly.
Two narrative pages describe two sessions on day one and one on day two. The Examinees' Guide and the Preparing page, which are the administration-specific documents, describe one session Tuesday and two Wednesday (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-07/NCBE-NextGen-UBE-Examinees-Guide%20J26-F27.pdf).
We treat the Examinees' Guide as controlling, because it is the document written for the sitting rather than the marketing summary. Verify against your own jurisdiction's instructions before you plan a travel day around it.
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.
So the honest thing to say about difficulty is that nobody knows. What is published is structure, counts, pacing and scale, all of which are on this page. What is not published is how anyone performed on it.
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 vs ube and nextgen bar exam subjects.
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.
Read your jurisdiction's own Examinees' Guide when it issues, since it is the document that governs your sitting rather than any summary.
Then work out your pacing against the published targets rather than against a legacy MBE rhythm, because switching modes inside a session is the new skill.
If you are choosing prep, our page on which providers have shipped NextGen is the next stop.
Everything on this page about the NextGen format 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.
A nine-hour, three-session exam over one and a half days that replaces the MBE, MEE and MPT with one integrated exam testing eight foundational concepts and seven lawyering skills, scored 500 to 750.
Three three-hour sessions, each with about 40 standalone multiple-choice questions, two integrated question sets and one performance task. Totals are 120 multiple-choice, six sets and three tasks, of which 100 and five are scored.
Standalone multiple-choice in select-one and select-two-of-six formats, integrated question sets combining multiple-choice with short and medium answers, and performance tasks including Legal Research Performance Tasks.
Unknown, and anyone telling you otherwise is guessing. The first administration was July 28 and 29, 2026, so no results, pass rates or score distributions existed when this was written.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026