The NextGen bar exam — full name the NextGen Uniform Bar Examination, or NextGen UBE — is NCBE’s redesigned version of the Uniform Bar Exam.
It was first given in July 2026 in ten jurisdictions and runs nine hours over 1.5 days on the examinee’s own laptop, producing one score on a 500–750 scale.
The legacy UBE it replaces is scheduled to run through February 2028.
What is the NextGen bar exam?
The NextGen bar exam — full name the NextGen Uniform Bar Examination, or NextGen UBE — is NCBE’s redesigned version of the Uniform Bar Exam.
NCBE writes and scores the exam; admitting lawyers remains each jurisdiction’s own job.
It replaces the exam NCBE now calls the “legacy UBE” — the MBE, MEE and MPT combination detailed in our Uniform Bar Exam guide.
Structurally it is a different exam.
Where the legacy UBE combines three separately scored components into a 400-point total, the NextGen UBE is one integrated exam: standalone multiple-choice questions, integrated question sets that present legal resources and ask you to work with them, and performance tasks — all folded into a single score on a 500–750 scale, with no separate multiple-choice and written component scores.
Delivery is different too.
Examinees take the NextGen UBE on their own laptops at in-person, proctored testing locations, using NCBE’s secure testing browser — the exam is not given at commercial test centers.
New to bar testing altogether?
The bar exam overview covers what a bar exam is, who runs it and how it leads to a law license.
Why is NCBE replacing the UBE?
The redesign changes what the exam measures.
NCBE’s NextGen content scope pairs eight foundational subjects with seven foundational lawyering skills: legal research, legal writing, issue spotting and analysis, investigation and evaluation, client counseling and advising, negotiation and dispute resolution, and client relationship and management.
On the legacy exam, the component NCBE describes as a skills test is the MPT — two 90-minute tasks that ask examinees to complete an assignment a beginning lawyer should be able to do.
The NextGen format makes skills a scored part of the exam itself, alongside 120 standalone multiple-choice questions, six integrated question sets and three performance tasks.
The replacement is also a scheduled phase-out, not a parallel option.
NCBE now calls the current exam the legacy UBE and says it will be administered through February 2028, and its implementation timeline puts the final administration of the MBE, MEE and MPT at the February 2028 exam.
Between July 2026 and July 2028, NCBE says most jurisdictions will move from the MBE, MEE and MPT to the NextGen UBE.
What the change does not alter is who is in charge of admission.
NCBE writes and scores the exam; each adopting jurisdiction keeps its own admission process, sets its own passing score and, in some cases, adds its own local law component — jurisdictions with local components may even extend the second day of testing.
When did it start and which states went first?
The NextGen UBE was first administered in July 2026 in ten jurisdictions: Connecticut, Guam, Idaho, Maryland, Missouri, the Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon, Palau, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Washington.
NextGen days follow the same Tuesday-and-last-Wednesday pattern in February and July as the legacy exam: day one is the Tuesday, and day two is the last Wednesday.
After the first group, the switch runs in three more waves on NCBE’s schedule, with published exam dates of February 23–24, 2027; July 27–28, 2027; and February 22–23, 2028:
- July 2027: Arizona, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont and Wyoming.
- February 2028: Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois and Montana.
- July 2028: Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Mississippi has adopted the NextGen UBE with the date still to be determined.
As of October 2026, only four jurisdictions show no NextGen adoption on NCBE’s map: Arkansas, Louisiana, Nevada and Puerto Rico.
NCBE’s adoption table — last updated September 25, 2026 — lists each jurisdiction’s first administration, passing score, the date it starts accepting transferred NextGen scores and its minimum transferred score.
Washington’s first administration had a make-up
What does it test that the UBE does not?
For administrations from July 2026 through February 2028, NCBE scopes the NextGen UBE to eight foundational subjects: business associations and relationships, civil procedure, constitutional law, contract law, criminal law and constitutional protections of accused persons, evidence, real property, and torts.
The skills layer is where the format changes most: on the legacy exam, the skills component is the MPT — two 90-minute tasks that UBE jurisdictions weight at 20% of the total.
NextGen examinees are instead tested across seven named foundational skills: legal research, legal writing, issue spotting and analysis, investigation and evaluation, client counseling and advising, negotiation and dispute resolution, and client relationship and management.
The integrated question sets and performance tasks present legal resources and ask the examinee to use them — family law and trusts and estates, for example, appear in skills questions with legal resources provided.
Three areas are not among the NextGen’s foundational subjects: Conflict of Laws, Secured Transactions and Trusts & Estates.
NCBE says examinees are not expected or required to develop a base of knowledge in those areas.
Family law joins the foundational list starting with the July 2028 exam.
How long is it and how is it scored?
The NextGen UBE runs nine hours over one and a half days: two 3-hour sessions on day one and one 3-hour session on day two.
NCBE’s own comparison puts the legacy UBE at twelve hours over two days.
Jurisdictions that add a local law component may extend day two beyond the NCBE sessions.
| Component | Count | Weight | NCBE’s expected pacing (approximate) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standalone multiple-choice | 120 questions (40 per section; select one of four or select two of six) | 49% | 1.8 minutes per question |
| Integrated question sets | Six sets (two per section) | 21% | 24 minutes per set |
| Performance tasks | Three tasks (one per section) | 30% | 60 minutes per task |
Twenty of the 120 multiple-choice questions and one of the six integrated question sets are unscored pretest items that look like scored ones.
Scoring is one number on a 500–750 scale, with no separate multiple-choice and written component scores — a structural break from the legacy UBE’s 400-point scale, where the MBE counted 50%, the MEE 30% and the MPT 20%, and NCBE combined jurisdiction-graded written scores with the MBE.
NextGen scores are equated, not curved: NCBE states a score does not depend on how other examinees performed.
On NCBE’s announced-score table, minimums run from 610 in Iowa, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota and Washington to 620 in Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Vermont.
Oregon’s minimum is 615 for the July 2026 exam only, rising to 620 afterward.
NCBE says most jurisdictions have set their NextGen passing scores between 610 and 620 — and that legacy and NextGen scores should not be compared directly, so do not line those numbers up against the legacy minimums of 260 to 270.
Which exam should a current law student plan for?
Work backwards from where you will sit, not from graduation in the abstract.
Find your target jurisdiction on NCBE’s adoption table: if its first NextGen administration falls on or before your exam date, you are preparing for the NextGen UBE; if you will sit before the switch, you are preparing for that jurisdiction’s current exam.
In UBE jurisdictions that is the legacy UBE on one of its final dates — February 23–24, 2027; July 27–28, 2027; or February 22–23, 2028.
Where NCBE lists the UBE as never adopted, such as California, Florida, Georgia and Virginia, it is the jurisdiction’s own bar exam.
For a current law student, the wave list is the deciding input.
If you will test in July 2028 or later in a July 2028 jurisdiction — the wave that includes California, Florida, New York and Texas — plan for the NextGen UBE.
In the twelve July 2027 jurisdictions and the four February 2028 ones, the switch comes earlier, and in the ten that switched in July 2026 the NextGen UBE is already in effect.
The license at the end of either exam is what the attorney career guide is built around.
Preparation has a different shape.
The skills layer means working with provided legal resources, not only recalling rules, and one fact matters for study materials: NCBE is not releasing the constructed-response questions from the July 2026 administration.
Budget for the exam software as well — NextGen examinees pay a $149 exam software and technology fee through their NCBE Account, on top of the application fee their jurisdiction charges.
If you want one score to travel, check the transfer rules before you pick a date.
NextGen scores are portable to jurisdictions that accept them, and some jurisdictions still giving the legacy UBE already accept transferred NextGen scores — but Florida and New York will not accept NextGen transfer scores from any administration before July 2028, and Hawaii is listed as not accepting them.
Confirm the exam and the score where you will sit
Does NextGen change anything for employers hiring new grads?
Yes — mostly timing and score literacy.
Between July 2026 and July 2028, most jurisdictions move from the MBE, MEE and MPT to the NextGen UBE, so a firm hiring across state lines in that window will interview new admits who sat different exams depending on where — and when — they tested.
The score on a résumé changes shape.
NextGen results are a single number on a 500–750 scale with no separate multiple-choice and written components, and NCBE is explicit that legacy and NextGen scores should not be compared directly: a 616 and a 270 are numbers from different scales, not a ranking.
Where a hire’s admission matters, the verification that counts is with the admitting jurisdiction, not the score alone.
What new admits were tested on also shifted.
From July 2026 through February 2028, the NextGen UBE tests eight foundational subjects plus seven lawyering skills — legal research, legal writing, issue spotting and analysis, investigation and evaluation, client counseling and advising, negotiation and dispute resolution, and client relationship and management (family law joins the foundational list with the July 2028 exam).
That is the tested scope, not a statement about any individual candidate.
The practical move during the transition is the one the exam itself forces: check the jurisdiction.
Admission runs through each jurisdiction’s own process, whichever exam the candidate sat.
Current openings for graduates coming out of this transition are listed under attorney jobs.
Career and employer information, not legal advice. Exam schedules, scores and admission rules are set by NCBE and the individual jurisdictions and keep changing through 2028 — confirm anything that affects your plans with the bar admission authority where you intend to sit or hire.