COM/AD/107/2026: the AD7 generalist internal competition

Last checked against sources: 26 October 2026. The notice is on the Commission's intranet only, so the facts below come from vendors and a staff union that quote it, and from the Commission's guidance to candidates. Each carries a label: confirmed, reported or estimated.

Status at a glance

Who could apply

As reported by EU Training, the competition was open to AD officials and temporary agents, and to staff at AST5 and above, with their last six full consecutive months in that status and twelve months in the Commission. The qualification routes were a three-year degree plus four years' experience, a four-year degree plus three, Commission certification plus four years at AD level, or equivalent vocational training plus four.

The knowledge test it introduced

AD7 was the first 2026 competition to use the new knowledge test: 30 four-option questions in 30 minutes, pass 15/30. The 2024 wave of internal competitions had set 50 questions in 50 minutes (reported by EU Training from those notices). The Commission's guidance to candidates for AD7 described a forward-only screen: questions answered in order, no going back, and no moving on without choosing an option, with a wrong answer scoring zero, the same as a blank.

Only the highest scorers, up to 2.5 times the 100 places, about 250 candidates, had their written test marked; qualifications were then checked in descending order of score until about 150 were eligible (reported by EU Training). No pass rate or score distribution for the knowledge test has been published. How scoring and the 2.5x rule work explains the arithmetic; AD vs AST timing compares the AD timer with the AST one.

The content cut-off: 31 March 2026

The Commission's guidance to candidates for AD7 limited the test to publicly available official EU sources and excluded publications released after the start of the application period, which it dates to 31 March 2026. AD7 is therefore the one 2026 competition whose cut-off is confirmed rather than estimated.

Later competitions have later cut-offs, so a question bank built for AD7 is not a complete bank for them. For example, COM(2026) 380 of 28 April 2026, which lets the 12-week standard public consultation be reduced by up to six weeks where other consultations run for the same initiative, was outside AD7's scope but inside the internal AD5's. The content cut-off guide compares every 2026 cut-off, and the source register can be filtered to this competition.

What followed

For complaints, a Commission staff union reports that no review of knowledge-test results was possible, and that a complaint asking for a specific question to be neutralised had to be lodged within three calendar days through the candidate portal. An indicative calendar reported by EU-Now in July placed the final eligibility check in September, the orals in October and November, and the reserve list in November to December 2026. The oral passes at 25/50 (reported). No results have been published.

The next competitions with the same test

The next generalist competitions are COM/AD/111/2026 (AD6) and COM/AST/112/2026 (AST2), which close on 30 October 2026 (reported). Both start with the cognitive gate, for which epsoshlprep.com offers practice. Our free 30-question test runs on the Commission's forward-only rules with AD or AST timing, in English, French or German. The format is explained in how the EU knowledge test works, and every change to our pages is logged in the corrections log.