How the EU knowledge test works: format, scoring and sources

Two different tests go by this name. The European Commission sets one in its own internal competitions for staff. EPSO sets another in Part 2 of its open competition for graduate administrators, EPSO/AD/427/26. They cover similar ground but run on different rules. This page explains both, says where each fact comes from, and marks what is reported or estimated rather than stated in an official text.

One point on sources. The Commission's internal notices and its guidance to candidates are published only on its intranet. Where this page describes them, it relies on the Commission's guidance to candidates (paraphrased, never quoted) and on vendors who relay the notices, and it says so each time.

The Commission's test in brief

• 30 questions, each with four options and one correct answer. Reported for every 2026 generalist notice by EPSOHQ, EU Training and EU-Now.
• 30 minutes at AD grades and 40 minutes at AST grades for the same 30 questions. Reported by EPSOHQ (AD5, AD6, AST3), EU Training (AD7) and EU-Now (AST2). See AD vs AST timing.
• One question per screen, answered in order. You cannot go back to an answered question, and you cannot move on until you have chosen an option. This is the Commission's guidance to candidates.
• No penalty for a wrong answer. A correct answer scores one point; a wrong or unanswered one scores zero (the Commission's guidance).
• Pass mark 15/30 in every 2026 generalist notice, as relayed by vendors. Passing is not enough on its own: see the scoring guide.
• Sat online in language 2, which must be English, French or German and must differ from the main language recorded in Sysper (reported by EPSOHQ and EU Training, relaying the notices).
• Set by the Commission, hosted by SHL. The screenshots in the Commission's guidance carry SHL's header. The questions, the content and the marking are the Commission's.

Two tests share the name

If you sit both, the habits do not transfer cleanly. The biggest difference is navigation: the Commission's test never lets you go back, while EPSO's platform lets you move around and flag questions. The second is what the score does.

EPSO's notice also fixes the order of marking: the EU knowledge test is scored first, and the digital skills test is scored only for candidates who reach the pass mark in it. Results are notified only at the end of the competition. More in the EPSO AD5 Part 2 guide and on the EPSO/AD/427/26 page.

What the Commission's test covers

The Commission's guidance to candidates names three areas. In paraphrase:

1. the EU's institutional set-up;
2. the Commission's governance, tasks, decision-making and procedures, including its budget and human resources;
3. the Commission's current mandate and policy priorities for 2024-2029.

The notices, as vendors relay them, split the same ground into four headings: the EU's institutional set-up, the Commission's roles and powers under the Treaties, its governance, decision-making and procedures, and its policy priorities. The guidance is the more precise of the two, because it names the budget, human resources and the 2024-2029 mandate. Our topic hubs follow its three areas.

EPSO's scope is broader in policy and lighter on the Commission's internal rules:

Only public sources, frozen at a date

The Commission's guidance says every question rests on publicly available official EU sources, and that nothing published after the start of the application period will be asked. Each competition therefore has its own content cut-off. The copy of the guidance we have seen is the AD7 version and gives 31 March 2026. For the other 2026 competitions the date follows from the opening of each notice, which we estimate: 29 May 2026 for AD5, mid to late June for AST3, and about 5 to 6 October 2026 for AD6 and AST2.

This matters more than it sounds: a better-regulation reform, two omnibus packages and the customs reform all fall between those dates. The content cut-off explained lists what counts for which competition, and the source register can be filtered by cut-off.

How the screen behaves

From the Commission's guidance to candidates:

• one question per screen, four options, one correct answer;
• questions in a fixed order, with no way back to one you have answered;
• no moving on until you choose an option, so no blanks;
• the test submits itself when time runs out, and the button on the last question submits it early;
• pressing Exit ends the session for good, with no way back in.

SHL's public help for candidates describes the same behaviour as standard on its platform: you cannot return to a question once the answer is submitted (article 174), wrong answers do not lower the score and questions cannot be skipped or left blank (article 181). SHL explains the no-return rule by adaptive difficulty in its own tests; nothing public says the Commission's test is adaptive.

What the score does

In the Commission's competitions the knowledge test works as a gate twice over. You need 15/30 to stay in, and then a rank: only the highest scorers, up to 2.5 times the number of places, have their written test marked. The written test is sat on the same day, lasts 90 minutes, and asks for a briefing, letter or note drawn from a set of documents.

After the written test, qualifications are checked in descending order of score until 1.5 times the places are eligible, and an online oral passes at 25/50 (reported by EPSOHQ for AD5). No public summary of the notices says the knowledge-test score is carried into the final ranking, so we treat it as a filter. The scoring guide covers where the real bar may sit.

Where the test sits in the competition

In the 2026 generalist competitions the knowledge test is the second of four stages:

1. a cognitive test, passed at the 60th percentile for AD grades and the 40th for AST (reported); the cognitive test comes first, and you sit nothing else until you pass it;
2. the EU knowledge test and the 90-minute written test, online on the same day;
3. the eligibility check, in descending order of score;
4. an online oral, after which the reserve list is drawn up in alphabetical order.

The two 2026 specialist competitions, AD6 case handlers (COM/AD/106/2026) and AD6 health experts (COM/AD/110/2026), use a field-specific test instead and are not covered here. Each generalist competition has its own page under competitions.

How the format changed

The 30-question format is new in 2026. A candidate's testimony annexed to a July 2023 note to the European Ombudsman records a 50-question AD5 paper with a pass mark of 30/50. In March 2025, 2,927 colleagues sat the AD5 and AD6 papers of the 2024 wave, according to a note by a Commission staff union, which also recorded complaints about questions on random facts and figures, a version weighted heavily towards the Draghi report, identical questions in the AD5 and AD6 papers, and typos.

The 2026 design answers most of those complaints: 30 questions instead of 50, official public sources only, a cut-off at the application date, and guidance with sample questions before the test. That is our reading. The Commission has not published its reasons.

What is not public

• Test dates. No public source gives the date of the AD5 or AST3 knowledge test. HR has committed to announce each test at least two weeks before it takes place (reported by a Commission staff union). For AD6 and AST2 we estimate February to April 2027.
• Proctoring. Whether the Commission's sitting is webcam-proctored is not stated in any public source. SHL's platform can proctor; that does not mean it is switched on.
• Question order. Whether each candidate gets the questions in a different order is unknown.
• A question counter. Whether the screen shows "question 7 of 30" is unknown.
• Shared items. Whether competitions sitting close together, such as AD5 and AST3, share questions is unknown. In 2025 a staff union reported identical questions in the AD5 and AD6 papers.

The Commission has said it will publish guidance and sample questions on Staff Centre before the AD6 test (reported by EPSOHQ). Those are intranet documents: we will note when they appear but never reproduce them.

How to practise for it

Practise in the format you will sit. Our free 30-question test runs under Commission rules (forward-only, an answer required to move on) with the AD or AST timer, or under open-competition rules with flag and return for EPSO Part 2. It is available in English, French and German, and every answer shows its official source and date. The full mocks follow the same rules. For what to read, start with the high-yield sources.