Has the NextGen bar exam been cancelled? No. The first administration ran on July 28–29, 2026 in ten jurisdictions for roughly 2,643 applicants, and the next two — February 23–24 and July 27–28, 2027 — are unchanged. What was cancelled was Washington's sitting, for about 700 people at one venue, after a technical failure the state bar and NCBE both attribute to the site rather than the exam. Missouri's day one was badly delayed for the same category of reason. Everywhere else the exam ran, and a first cohort came out with opinions about it.
Update, October 17, 2026: the results are out. NCBE reported on September 25 that 72.7% of the 2,630 examinees with an official score passed, with a national mean of 640.6, and that its analyses "did not find a consistent pattern" showing that examinees hit by the July disruptions scored differently. Missouri passed 77.2%, Idaho 79.7%, Washington 74.29% (July and September together), Maryland 69% and Oregon 80.2%. The full table is on our results page.
This is the verified account: what happened, what each affected jurisdiction did about it, what the takers reported about the exam itself, when the first results landed, and what it changes for anyone sitting in February 2027. Every figure below comes from NCBE's statements, the Washington State Bar Association's July 2026 page and results release, the Missouri Board of Law Examiners' results, the Missouri Supreme Court's two letters and reporting by the ABA Journal and Bloomberg Law, first checked on September 20, 2026 and updated on October 15, 2026 with the results, NCBE's analysis and Washington's later orders, and on October 17 with Oregon's results; the candidate reports are linked to the threads they came from.
The timeline
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| July 28, 2026 | Day one. In Yakima, Washington, roughly 700 applicants cannot start; the Washington State Bar cancels its exam for most of them. In Columbia, Missouri, delayed starts mean some applicants cannot complete the day's two sections. One Maryland site starts 45 minutes late, then runs to schedule. |
| July 29 | Day two. Missouri's affected applicants complete their remaining sections. NCBE issues its statement: 2,643 applicants, 10 jurisdictions, 16 sites; Washington's problem was "a venue-specific infrastructure issue." |
| August 6 | The Washington Supreme Court sets out the options for those who couldn't test, including a waiver of the bar exam requirement; choices due by noon on August 14. |
| August 11 | The Missouri Supreme Court: the site's Wi-Fi "was inadequate and did not perform as was represented"; the disruption "was not due to either the NextGen examination itself or its testing platform." |
| August 18 | The Association of Academic Support Educators asks Missouri's court to lower the passing score from 610 to 605, reimburse costs and publish its findings. |
| September 1 | NCBE announces the July 2026 MBE national mean and says the NextGen national mean will follow in early October; grading of written responses is still in progress. |
| September 1–2 | Washington's make-up exam at UW Tacoma: 172 sit and 171 complete every section; NCBE reports no administration-level technical interruptions. |
| September 4 | The Washington Supreme Court lets Yakima registrants whose MPRE score would expire use an MPRE score of 85 or higher for admission after passing the September or February exam. |
| September 8 | Missouri's court: no decision on any remedy until results and score-variance data are in. |
| September 25 | NCBE's national results: 72.7% pass, mean 640.6, 2,630 examinees with an official score. |
| October 2 | Missouri results: 504 of 653 pass (77.2%) at a passing score of 610. |
| October 6 | Idaho results: 79.7% of 177. |
| October 9 | Washington results, July and September together: 208 of 280 pass (74.29%). Maryland (69%) and Connecticut (pass list) also release. |
| October 16 | Oregon results: 344 of 429 pass (80.2%) at a passing score of 615. |
Washington: the cancellation and the four remedies
The Washington State Bar's own description is short: a technical failure at the venue led to the cancellation of the July 2026 bar exam for the majority of applicants. NCBE's statement put it as a venue-specific infrastructure issue that prevented the jurisdiction from completing testing. Accounts from the room — reported in threads like this one from the day itself — describe applicants unable to connect to the venue's Wi-Fi and being sent home.
Applicants who couldn't complete the July exam and had no prior failure were offered four options: accept a waiver of the bar exam requirement, transfer to the September 1–2 make-up exam at the University of Washington Tacoma, transfer to the February 2027 exam (also in Tacoma), or withdraw and take a refund. The waiver — diploma privilege by another name — came with a limit the ABA Journal spelled out: admission in Washington only, with no portable score, so anyone planning to practice elsewhere needed to sit the exam. 447 accepted the waiver, according to the state bar as reported by Bloomberg Law, and NCBE reports that 172 sat the September make-up and 171 completed every section.
Three further Washington measures matter beyond the waiver. Applicants who completed the July exam and did not pass may reapply for February 2027 without an additional application fee or exam fee. Yakima registrants who couldn't sit, and whose MPRE score would expire before they can take and pass the September or February exam, may use an MPRE score of 85 or higher (Washington Supreme Court order of September 4, 2026). And the WSBA's Board of Governors adopted "courtesy seating": lawyers admitted by the waiver can sit the exam in Washington in 2027 to earn a portable NextGen UBE score, paying a registration fee and a technology fee, with registration from October 9, 2026. Results for the July and September sittings came out together on October 9, 2026: 208 of 280 passed (74.29%).
The make-up is the part worth studying if you're sitting in 2027. NCBE's account: every candidate was ready before exam day, 515 exam sessions ran over two days with no administration-level technical interruptions, three backup devices covered individual device problems, the independent cellular backup was never needed, and all responses were uploaded on site and confirmed as received. That is what a jurisdiction does after a venue fails, and it's a reasonable checklist to ask your own board about.
Missouri: a delay, a petition, and a decision that waits for results
Missouri's day one didn't collapse; it slipped. Applicants at the Columbia site faced delayed starts — some waiting hours — so that some could not complete the first day's two sections, which were pushed into a modified second-day schedule. The thread from that morning describes the morning session derailing as more than half the room failed to get onto Wi-Fi.
The Missouri Supreme Court's August 11 statement is unusually direct for a court: the interruptions were "unacceptable and added enormous stress for applicants," the site's Wi-Fi network "was inadequate and did not perform as was represented," and the disruption "was not due to either the NextGen examination itself or its testing platform" — about which, it added, examinee feedback had otherwise been positive. A week later the Association of Academic Support Educators asked the court to drop the passing score from 610 to 605, reimburse applicants for costs the delay caused, and publish the findings of its review. On September 8 the court answered the question everyone was asking by declining to answer it yet: it has made no determination on remedial action and anticipates none "until the July examination results are available and the Court has had the opportunity to consider the statistical information and data concerning examination performance and any unexpected score variance among applicants."
Missouri released results on October 2, 2026 at a passing score of 610: 504 of 653 passed (77.2%), 84.9% of first-time takers. NCBE's later analysis found that examinees on Missouri's adjusted schedule "performed consistently with the broader population". We found no published decision on the request to lower the score as of October 24, 2026 (the Board of Law Examiners' latest announcement is still its October 2 results notice).
What the exam itself was like
Strip away the venue failures and the first cohort's reports converge on a few points. The threads are worth reading in full; these are the recurring themes, each linked to where it was said.
- The clock was the exam. The timing thread is the most consistent report from July: candidates finishing with seconds to spare, or not finishing, on items that individually felt manageable. NCBE budgets about 1.8 minutes per multiple-choice question, 24 per question set and 60 per performance task, and the three-hour section is one pool — the arithmetic is in the format guide.
- The standalone questions surprised people more than the written formats. The pre-exam anxiety was about integrated question sets; afterwards, several takers described the question sets and performance tasks as fine and the multiple-choice block as the harder part. One post-exam thread put it as the exam being different from what they'd been told would be tested — which is what a new exam with a small public sample pool feels like from inside.
- The mood was steadier than the headlines. The day-after thread Next Gen: how are we feeling? drew dozens of answers, and the tone — a retaker calling it "weirdly okay," others saying it felt fine in some ways and frightening in others — is not the tone of a cohort that thought the exam was broken.
- Some sites were simply fine. Connecticut earned its own thread for a smooth administration; NCBE said the issues were "limited to three testing locations in three jurisdictions". The failures were venues, not the platform — the conclusion Missouri's court reached, too.
For a February 2027 candidate the practical translation is short: practice each format under its own clock, then practice whole three-hour sections in the real order, and use worked sample questions to calibrate difficulty against more than NCBE's own sample items.
Does the software need a live internet connection?
This question got its own thread in August, because two official sources seemed to describe it differently. NCBE's Examinees' Guide is the controlling text, and it says three things. Your testing location will have standard and backup Wi-Fi. You must connect at the start of each section. And if connectivity is lost temporarily, your responses are saved on your laptop and the exam continues — but you must reconnect before you can begin the next section or leave at the end of each exam day. Sites also have technical proctors alongside the exam proctors, and backup laptops reserved for in-session emergencies.
Read against July, that explains both what failed and what didn't: a venue whose network can't get a room of laptops connected at the start of a section stops the section from starting, which is the Yakima and Columbia story, while a connection that drops mid-section is designed to be survivable. It also explains the make-up's fixes — cellular backup, on-site upload confirmation — which target the start-of-section and end-of-day moments where the network is mandatory.
What changes for February 2027
The exam doesn't. February 23–24, 2027 has the same format and no new jurisdictions (NCBE's decisions table lists none starting that month), and the next wave, twelve jurisdictions in NCBE's table, joins on July 27–28, 2027. Washington sits in Tacoma rather than Yakima. NCBE said in July it would "establish the facts, identify lessons learned, and determine whether additional operational safeguards are appropriate"; on September 25 it said it had made technical and operational changes and would give more detail in a forthcoming report. That report wasn't out as of November 1. In the fall 2026 issue of The Bar Examiner, NCBE President Judith Gundersen wrote that the work since July had "already led to changes in how we prepare for future administrations, including closer review of each testing site's technology and network capacity, stronger backup plans, and clearer processes for responding when issues arise."
What you control is unchanged, and it's most of it. NCBE's Examinees' Guide for July 2026 and February 2027 sets the same readiness rules for both: the exam tutorial and system compatibility check done on the laptop you'll bring, every step completed no later than 72 hours before exam day. Your board's own instructions cover arrival times and what you may bring. The exam-day checklist walks through each one. What July adds is a short list of questions worth asking your board before you travel: what the venue's backup connectivity is, whether backup devices are on site, and how you'll be told if a section start is delayed.
If you were in Yakima or Columbia and are heading to February, the things July changed for you are administrative: Washington's fee waiver for those who completed July and didn't pass, and its MPRE extension for Yakima registrants. Missouri's results used 610, so build your February plan on 610.
Results season
The results are out: 72.7% passed nationally (NCBE, September 25), with Missouri at 77.2%, Idaho 79.7%, Washington 74.29%, Maryland 69% and Oregon 80.2%. The results page has the full table and the February deadlines, and the July 2026 results by state cover every legacy-UBE and state-exam jurisdiction too. If the number isn't what you needed, the comeback plan is built for exactly this cohort: a February 2027 retake on the same exam and, if you completed Washington's July exam, no second application or exam fee.
Oregon's July 2026 bar exam results
80.2% passed. On October 16, 2026 the Oregon State Bar posted its July 2026 results: 344 of 429 applicants scored 615 or higher. First-time takers passed at 90% (304 of 338) and repeat takers at 44% (40 of 91), and the page lists every passing applicant by name. Applicants had learned their results on October 14–15 through their Oregon State Bar admissions accounts. The swearing-in ceremony was set for October 22 at Willamette University.
The Oregon Supreme Court set 615 for this first exam only. From February 2027, Oregon's passing score is 620, five points higher. Oregon's February 2027 application opened on October 13. The timely filing deadline, which is also the date for accommodation requests, is November 16, 2026, and the late deadline is December 15, 2026.
What to do now
If you're sitting in February 2027, the first administration handed you three things the pioneers didn't have: a format that has now been run, a set of candidate reports that all say time, and a list of venue questions worth asking. Take the ten-question diagnostic under the clock, put February 23 into the free study plan generator, and treat the timed section — not the untimed question — as the unit of practice from here.
