9,969 candidates are participating in the national residency entrance exam, organized in the university centers of Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Craiova, Iași, Târgu-Mureș, and Timișoara. They are competing for 5,217 positions and 266 posts, with the number of applicants lower than last year, when 10,147 candidates were registered.
The greatest competition is in Medicine, where 7,180 candidates are trying to fill 4,481 positions. For Dental Medicine, 1,855 people have registered for 491 positions, while for Pharmacy there are 934 candidates and 245 positions. Bucharest brings together the most participants, 3,736, of whom 2,733 are in Medicine.
The exam consists of a multiple-choice test with 200 questions, taken over four hours. Candidates will be allowed to enter the rooms from 8:30 a.m., and the exam begins at 10:00 a.m. The passing threshold is 60% of the maximum score achieved. Appeals may be submitted within 24 hours and resolved within a further 48 hours.
Each candidate paid a fee of 500 lei. Allocation is carried out in score order, within the limit of available positions. Family medicine has the most positions, 645, followed by cardiology, intensive care, internal medicine, and general surgery.
Context: controversies and reactions related to the examinations for specialist doctors in 2026
Before the current residency entrance examination, discussions in the medical system were dominated by issues reported at the examination for the title of specialist doctor (held nationwide between October 7 and November 3, 2026), where resident doctors complained about incorrect marking schemes and unclear requirements, calling for regrading and an extraordinary session.
Following the analysis of the opinions submitted by the committees responsible for resolving appeals, the Ministry of Health subsequently announced that it would neither retake the examination nor regrade the papers, stating that no professional aspects had been identified to justify changes to the questions or marking schemes, while the Romanian College of Physicians called for transparency and legal measures only if irregularities were confirmed.
