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.
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 land, 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, the Missouri Supreme Court's two letters and the ABA Journal's reporting, all checked on September 20, 2026; 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 7 | 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: 171 sit; NCBE reports no administration-level technical interruptions. |
| September 8 | Missouri's court: no decision on any remedy until results and score-variance data are in. |
| October 2 | Missouri results. |
| October 9 | Washington results, July and September together. |
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. By the state bar's count, 447 took the waiver, 171 sat the September make-up, 23 moved to February 2027 and two withdrew.
Two further Washington measures matter to more than the Yakima cohort. Applicants who completed the July exam and don't pass may reapply for February 2027 without paying the application fee or the exam fee again, and applicants whose MPRE score would expire before they can sit and pass in September or February may still use a score of 85 or higher. Results for the July and September sittings are released together on October 9, 2026, on applicants' WSBA home pages.
The make-up is the part worth studying if you're sitting in 2027. Per the ABA Journal, the September administration ran with three backup devices deployed, improved cellular connectivity measures, and on-site upload confirmation; NCBE reported that all response data was uploaded and confirmed on site. 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."
So Missouri's passing score stands at 610 as results release on October 2, 2026 — notice on applicant home pages in the morning, the list of successful candidates after 1 p.m. — and any remedy, if there is one, comes after.
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; Idaho, Oregon and the territories reported nothing like Yakima. 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 something wider than NCBE's eight public 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 runs in the same ten jurisdictions with the same format, and the thirteen-state wave still joins in July. 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"; Missouri's court says it now has "a thorough understanding of what occurred" and is confident in providing a reliable administration going forward. Neither has published a detailed post-mortem as of this writing, so the venue-level fixes you can point to are Washington's.
What you control is unchanged, and it's most of it. NCBE's readiness rules were the same in July and will be in February: the system check and exam tutorial done on the same laptop you'll bring, every step completed at least 72 hours before exam day, a wired mouse, arrival at least 90 minutes before the start. 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 two things July changed for you are administrative — Washington's fee waiver for July takers who don't pass, and its MPRE extension — and one thing it didn't: Missouri's remedy question stays open until after October 2, so build your February plan on 610.
Results season
Missouri on October 2, Washington on October 9, NCBE's national mean in early October, and the other first-wave boards on their own calendars — the results page tracks each one and explains how a NextGen score actually reaches you. 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, with the same ten jurisdictions and, in Washington's case, no second application fee.
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.
