Which Swiss cantons require a Gymnasium entrance exam?

The question sounds like it should have a one line answer, and that is exactly where most overviews on the internet come apart. There is no Swiss Gymiprüfung. There are 26 cantonal procedures that differ in their form, in their timing and in the question of who has to sit an exam at all.

This page does something that almost nobody else does: it separates what we read ourselves at the responsible cantonal office from what we only know at second hand. An honestly marked gap is worth more to you than a smooth table with one wrong row in it.

If you have just arrived in Switzerland, start here

The Gymnasium is the academic branch of upper secondary school, and it is the branch that leads to the Matura. Think of it as the equivalent of an academic sixth form or a college preparatory high school, with two differences that matter. It is selective, so a place has to be won rather than simply taken up. And it starts much earlier than the equivalent abroad: the Langgymnasium (the long route, six years) begins after the sixth year of primary school, at about twelve, while the Kurzgymnasium (the short route, four years) begins after lower secondary school, at around fifteen.

The Matura is the certificate at the end of it, and it is the reason the entrance exam carries so much weight. A Swiss Matura gives direct access to the Swiss universities. There is no second entrance exam afterwards, no personal statement, no application race between candidates, no offer that depends on predicted grades. You pass the Matura, you are in. A selection that in Britain or the United States happens at eighteen happens here at twelve or fifteen, at the door of the Gymnasium.

The exam at that door is what everyone calls the Gymiprüfung. Whether your child sits one at all depends on where you live, and that is the second thing to understand: education in Switzerland is a cantonal matter. Twenty-six cantons, twenty-six sets of rules. There is no national school system, no national curriculum for upper secondary entry and no national exam date. A family in Zug and a family two train stops away in Schwyz are in different systems.

One more thing before the table, because English-speaking parents almost always get it the wrong way round. The Gymnasium is not the only route to a degree, and it is not the good route. The other route is the apprenticeship, and in Switzerland an apprenticeship is not what the word suggests in English. It is a three or four year paid training contract with a company, combined with school, it leads to a federally recognised qualification, and it can be combined with the Berufsmaturität, a vocational baccalaureate that opens the universities of applied sciences and, through a supplementary exam called the Passerelle, the regular universities as well. Most young people in this country take that route. It is the mainstream, not the safety net.

What we checked and what we did not

For this article we opened the page of the cantonal education office or of the cantonal upper secondary school for each canton and read there how the move up is regulated. Eight cantons could be verified that way on 13 September 2026. For the rest, the responsible page could not be reached when we went to press, or could not be found unambiguously.

Those cantons still appear in the table, but with a note that the information comes from a secondary source and has not been confirmed by us. For each of them we name the office where you can check it yourself in two minutes. We will fill these rows in and adjust the date at the top as soon as we have them at source.

The overview by canton

The last row but one covers Basel-Landschaft, Basel-Stadt, Jura, Neuchâtel, Nidwalden, Obwalden, Solothurn, Ticino, Uri, Valais and Vaud.

The unverified rows are not a placeholder for later. They are the honest statement that we do not know, and an invitation to spend the half minute it takes before you plan a registration. Fribourg and Geneva are missing from the list that the widely circulated overviews rely on, and we are not going to add them from a feeling.

Bern is the most important special case

If you look this up in one of the usual lists, Bern appears among the cantons without an entrance exam. That is too coarse. The canton of Bern runs both routes in parallel, and it says so on the page of its Department of Education and Culture: the move into the academic branch happens from the eighth or the ninth school year, by way of a recommendation or an entrance exam.

Anyone who meets the requirements in the recommendation procedure moves up without an exam. For the recommendation, six of the eight partial assessments have to read ‘recommended’, and both subject performance and methodological and personal competences are assessed. Anyone who does not receive a recommendation, or who did not take part in the recommendation procedure at all, can register for the entrance exam.

For a family in the canton of Bern that is the decisive piece of information. You have two routes, and the registration deadlines for them lie two and a half months apart.

What no entrance exam means in practice

Exam free sounds like less pressure. Mostly it means that the pressure starts earlier and lasts longer.

In the canton of Aargau, transfers to upper secondary school happen on the basis of the marks in the subjects of the Aargau curriculum. In the canton of Lucerne, the move into the Kurzzeitgymnasium runs through a procedure that lasts a whole semester and starts with a registration in August. In the canton of Zug, entry to the Kantonsschule happens through a transfer procedure that is called transfer procedure I or II depending on when it takes place.

In all three cases the same thing applies: there is no single day on which everything is decided, but there is also no single day on which anything can be made good. A family that does not know in the autumn of the sixth school year that a procedure is already running may have left points on the table.

What an entrance exam asks for

The exam cantons differ less in their subjects than you would expect. German and mathematics are everywhere, and a foreign language is added depending on the canton and the school level.

For entry into the first year of the Gymnasium, the canton of Bern examines four parts: German in writing over 120 minutes, French in writing over 60 minutes, and mathematics in two parts of 60 minutes each. On top of that comes an oral French exam of five minutes, which is only taken by candidates who still have a chance after the written parts. A candidate passes with at least 16 points and no more than two marks below 4.

That last sentence needs a footnote for anyone who grew up with letter grades. Swiss school marks run from 1 to 6, 6 is the best, and 4 is the pass mark.

The canton of Schwyz publishes its syllabuses and one specimen paper per subject openly. That is the most honest way to answer the question of what is actually being asked, and it costs nothing.

Why the canton question reaches further than a date

Your canton of residence does not only decide the form of the procedure. It also decides when your child reaches the junction, how many attempts are possible, and which alternatives are open if the first attempt is not enough.

In an exam canton, preparation can be planned towards a date, and it can be sold expensively. In a procedure canton it is diffuse, because nobody can sell a course for ‘good marks over two semesters’. That also explains why the supply of commercial preparation courses is spread so unevenly across Switzerland. It follows what can be examined, not what is needed.

For the question of how your child is placed cognitively, the canton changes nothing. For the question of when and how that becomes visible, it changes everything.

Langgymnasium or Kurzgymnasium: the second difference

The question about the exam is only half of it. Just as important is when in the school career the junction is reached at all, and that too differs by canton.

The canton of Lucerne runs Langzeitgymnasien over six years, Kurzzeitgymnasien over four years, and special streams over five years for young people with sporting or musical talent. In the canton of Zurich, the route into the Langgymnasium runs from the sixth primary class, and the route into the Kurzgymnasium from the second or third class of lower secondary school. The canton of St. Gallen examines for the Gymnasium and the Untergymnasium on separate days. In the canton of Thurgau there are two rounds, depending on whether a candidate comes from the second or the third year of lower secondary school. In the canton of Bern the move up happens from the eighth or the ninth school year, and entry into the third Gymnasium year is only possible under certain conditions.

For you that means two families in the same canton can face completely different deadlines, simply because their children are different ages.

How to read this table properly

Three mistakes happen regularly with overviews like this one, and all three cost time.

The first is to confuse a model with a level of difficulty. An exam and a procedure are two ways of selecting, not two levels. The second is to apply a cantonal entry to every school type. The Fachmittelschule, which is a specialised upper secondary school leading into health, education, social work and the arts, the commercial school and the vocational baccalaureate school often have their own procedures and their own dates, even where the Gymnasium is exam free. The third is to carry over last year’s information. Cantons move exam weeks, change syllabuses and convert individual procedures.

Our table answers one single question: how entry to the Gymnasium is organised in principle in that canton. Everything beyond that belongs on the cantonal page, and that is where it is.

Where to check for yourself

There is a responsible office behind every row in this table. These offices answer enquiries, and their pages are the only source that counts in case of doubt.

Phone the office of your canton if the page leaves a question open. That is faster than any search, and the answer is more binding than anything you will find on an advice page, ours included. If your German is not yet up to a phone call, ask at your child’s school first: the class teacher deals with these procedures every year.

What to do with this information

Settle the form first: exam, procedure, or both. Then settle the earliest cut off date, because that is almost never the exam day but the registration months before it. And third, settle which routes stay open if it is not enough, before you need that case.

What those three points do not answer is whether the Gymnasium is the right route at all. That needs an assessment of the cognitive starting position, and that one is independent of the canton. Our test gives you a reference value for that in 25 minutes, free of charge and without registration. It is not a substitute for a cantonal procedure and does not want to be one.