Gymnasium entrance exam 2027: dates and deadlines by canton

This page contains only dates that we read ourselves on 13 September 2026 on the page of the responsible cantonal office. What was not there is not here. That makes the overview shorter than others, and it makes it reliable.

The most important sentence first: the exam day is rarely the date you need in your calendar. The registration deadline falls weeks or months earlier, and it is the date on which a transfer year is actually decided.

What is being scheduled here, for readers who are new to this

The Gymnasium is the academic branch of upper secondary school in Switzerland, and it leads to the Matura. The Matura is the school leaving certificate that gives direct access to the Swiss universities. There is no separate university entrance exam afterwards and no application competition of the kind you know from the United Kingdom or the United States, which is why the exam at the entrance to the Gymnasium carries so much weight. Everyone calls it the Gymiprüfung.

Two shapes of it exist, and both appear in the table below. The Langgymnasium is the long route: entry after the sixth year of primary school, at about twelve, six years to the Matura. The Kurzgymnasium is the short route: entry after two or three years of lower secondary school, at around fifteen, four years to the Matura. Some cantons use their own names for these, such as Untergymnasium in St. Gallen or GYM1 in Bern for the first Gymnasium year.

And the reason there is a table at all rather than a single date: education in Switzerland is a cantonal matter. Twenty-six cantons set their own rules, so there is no national exam date, no national syllabus and no national admission procedure. Whether your child sits an exam at all, and when, depends on the canton you live in.

The 2027 dates at a glance

Two things stand out. First, in several cantons the exams fall in the same week of March, which practically rules out a second attempt in a neighbouring canton. Second, the Thurgau calendar starts as early as November of the previous year.

The FMS in the Thurgau row is the Fachmittelschule, a specialised upper secondary school that sits between the Gymnasium and the apprenticeship and leads into health, education, social work and the arts. Pupils there can also apply to move into the Gymnasium, on that second set of dates.

Bern: two deadlines, two and a half months apart

The canton of Bern has two routes into the first Gymnasium year, and each has its own cut off date. Anyone who wants to take part in the recommendation procedure registers online by 1 December. The teachers at the lower secondary school then assess, by the end of January, both the subject performance and the methodological and personal competences in German, French, mathematics and the combined subject of nature, people and society.

Anyone who does not receive a recommendation, or who did not register for the recommendation procedure in the first place, can register for the entrance exam by 15 February. The written exam is on 8 and 9 March 2027, and the oral French exam follows on 19 March 2027.

Missing 1 December does not cost you access to the Gymnasium. It costs you the route there that avoids an exam. That distinction reaches many households too late.

St. Gallen: the rhythm shifts from 2027

The Office for Upper Secondary Schools publishes a four year plan that fixes the dates up to 2029. For 2027 it says: registration deadline 9 February, Gymnasium entrance exam on 8 and 9 March, Untergymnasium entrance exam on 10 and 11 March.

What is remarkable is the change documented in that plan. Up to 2026 the Gymnasium exam fell in calendar week 11, and from 2027 it falls in week 10. The Untergymnasium exam moves at the same time from Monday and Tuesday to Wednesday and Thursday. A family going by the experience of the previous year group is therefore one week and two weekdays out.

Registration runs through a central platform. The canton also provides specimen papers, marking schemes for the written composition and a list of the permitted calculators for download.

Thurgau: the earliest calendar

The canton of Thurgau examines in two separate rounds, depending on which class a candidate comes from. For the move up from the third year of lower secondary school, the registration deadline ends on 25 November 2026. The written exam is on 4 and 5 January 2027 and the oral on 22 January 2027.

Candidates from the second year of lower secondary school or from the Fachmittelschule have until 14 February 2027. Their written exams are on 5 and 6 March and their oral exams on 22 March 2027.

The first round therefore falls immediately after the Christmas holidays. A family that wants to start preparing in December has already missed the moment. Admission to an upper secondary school in Thurgau requires a pass in the entrance exam, and the cantonal page names no route past it based on school marks.

Schwyz: deliberately no figures yet

For the canton of Schwyz our table says ‘not yet published’ three times. That is not an omission, it is the state of affairs. The Office for Upper Secondary and Higher Education states itself that the dates of the entrance exam and of the information events will be published in the autumn of 2026.

Equally open is how the foreign languages will be examined. The form of the exam for English and French is set afresh each year by the Department of Education on the basis of the admission regulations, and that too will be announced in the autumn of 2026.

What you can already use are the syllabuses and one specimen paper per subject. Both are publicly available on the cantonal page. The canton puts it in a sentence worth remembering: pupils who have mastered this material should be able to pass the exam.

Zurich as a reference point

We include Zurich because it is the one canton with well documented figures, not because we want to send you there. The registration window for the central entrance exam to the Langgymnasium runs from 1 January 2027 to 10 February 2027. For the art and sport Gymnasium Rämibühl it closes as early as 15 January 2027.

Candidates may register for the exam if they are attending the sixth primary class and were born after 31 July 2012, for entry in the 2027/28 school year. The first semester report from the sixth primary class is required.

The cantonal page also records that a pupil may attend an upper secondary school if they pass the entrance exam or meet the requirements for admission without an exam. Even in Zurich, an exam canton, the exam is therefore not the only way in.

If you come from a private school or from outside the system

Separate deadlines apply to young people outside the state school system, and they are tighter. This concerns many international families directly.

In the canton of Bern, no recommendation can be issued for pupils from private schools or from pre-vocational school years. They register for the entrance exam directly instead, from 2 December to 15 February. There is also an age limit: registration is only possible if the candidate has not yet turned 17 on 1 May before entry into the first Gymnasium year.

In the canton of Zurich, registration for the Langgymnasium exam is tied to two conditions: attendance of the sixth primary class and a date of birth after 31 July 2012 for entry in the 2027/28 school year. The first semester report from the sixth primary class is required.

Families moving in from another canton settle two things in advance: the deadline, and who is responsible for the costs.

What happens after you register

In most cantons several weeks pass between the registration deadline and the exam day, during which the organising runs and you can no longer influence anything.

In the canton of Bern, parents receive the invitation to the exam with the exam timetable from the responsible exam school after the registration deadline has passed. The registration itself already asks for the preferred Gymnasium, the specialist subject, the third language and the arts subject, as well as any special programmes such as talent support or a bilingual Matura.

That choice is not a detail. It determines where the exam is taken and which profile follows from it, and many families make it under time pressure on the last day of registration. Set aside an evening of its own for it, several weeks before the deadline.

Plan backwards instead of hoping forwards

The verified dates produce a calendar that works in almost every canton, provided you build it backwards from the cut off date.

The fourth point is where most money is lost. Taking stock tells you whether a gap lies in the material, in the pace or in dealing with an unfamiliar type of question. Those three causes call for completely different answers, and only one of them can sensibly be worked on with a course costing several thousand francs.

What can still change before the exam

Dates are the most stable part of an admission procedure, and even they move. St. Gallen has shifted the exam rhythm from 2027, Schwyz sets the form of the foreign language exams anew each year, and Thurgau abolished the obligation to run a different assessment from 2025.

So check the page of your canton once more shortly before you register, even if you have saved this page. We update the table as soon as anything changes at one of the six sources, and we record the date at the top. Even so, in case of doubt the cantonal information applies and not ours.

If you also want to know how your child is placed cognitively before you decide about preparation, our test takes 25 minutes, costs nothing and gives a reference value across five areas. It does not replace a cantonal procedure, but it tells you early what you are actually talking about. If the answer in March is a no, the routes that stay open are set out in what happens after a failed entrance exam.