Starting Thursday, April 16, 2026, approximately 22,000 students at 494 public and private grammar schools, comprehensive schools, adult education colleges, and Waldorf schools in North Rhine-Westphalia will begin their written Abitur (university entrance exam) examinations. Additionally, starting Wednesday, April 22, 2026, around 8,000 young people at 231 vocational colleges will take their exams. While the general education schools will administer central written exams in 40 subjects, the vocational colleges will have 47 subjects.
The reason for the comparatively low number of high school graduates in the 2025/26 school year is the return from the eight-year to the nine-year secondary school system (G8) at most grammar schools in North Rhine-Westphalia. Due to the absence of a graduating class, no final exams will be held there this year. When the first G9 cohort takes their exams at many grammar schools in the 2026/27 school year, the number of high school graduates across all school types is expected to rise again to around 70,500.
Education Minister Dorothee Feller: “The Abitur (university entrance qualification) is an important milestone for thousands of young people in North Rhine-Westphalia. The exams mark the end of their school career and are also an opportunity to demonstrate their abilities. The students are preparing intensively for this these days. I wish them all the best of luck and hope they can celebrate a wonderful graduation after the exams. I thank our fantastic teachers, the parents, and everyone else who supports them in their preparation and is keeping their fingers crossed for the graduating students.”
In the last week before the Easter holidays, the graduating students prepared intensively for their upcoming exams. Together with their teachers, they practiced, for example, classic exam questions and reviewed the core content once again.
Since 2017, North Rhine-Westphalia has participated in the joint pool of exam questions used by the German states. This applies to the subjects German, mathematics, English, and French, and since last year also to biology, chemistry, and physics. The joint pool of questions was established by the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs and helps to ensure the comparability and quality of the Abitur (university entrance examination) exams nationwide.
You can find the exam dates for general education schools here .
You can find the exam dates for the vocational high school here .
The results of the central Abitur exams will be compiled in a report, as is the case every year, which is expected to be available for download in the autumn. Reports from previous years can be found here and here .
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