NCBE Announces National Mean for July 2026 MBE
MADISON, WISCONSIN, September 1, 2026—The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) announced today that the national mean scaled score for the July 2026 Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) was 140.7, a decrease of about 1.7 points compared to the July 2025 mean of 142.4.
The MBE, which consists of 200 multiple-choice questions answered over six hours, is one of three assessments that make up the legacy bar exam. The legacy exam was administered this July by 44 US jurisdictions; an additional 10 jurisdictions that had previously used the MBE as part of the legacy bar exam administered the NextGen Uniform Bar Examination this July, which is being rolled out across the country over the next two years.
44,472 examinees took the July 2026 MBE, a decrease of about 5% compared to the 46,959 examinees who sat for the exam in July 2025. This decrease is largely attributable to the fact that only 44 jurisdictions administered this July’s MBE.
Based on NCBE data, approximately 76% of July 2026 examinees were likely taking the MBE for the first time, and approximately 24% were likely repeat test takers.[1] This reflects a slight decrease in the proportion of likely first-time takers and a slight increase in the proportion of likely repeaters compared to July 2025, when approximately 77% of examinees were likely taking the exam for the first time, and approximately 23% were likely repeat test takers.
“This July’s MBE mean is consistent with performance over the past five years,” said Bob Schwartz, Managing Director of Psychometrics at NCBE. “Although 10 fewer jurisdictions administered the MBE this year, our analysis indicates that their absence from the national pool did not meaningfully affect the mean, as MBE mean scores over time are nearly identical whether those 10 jurisdictions are included or excluded.”
Schwartz added, “Overall, the mix of likely first-time and repeat test takers remained similar to July 2025, suggesting that the change in the national mean was not driven by a substantial shift between these two groups.”
The MBE is equated as part of the scoring process to adjust for any variation in exam difficulty across administrations. This statistical procedure ensures that examinee performance can be meaningfully compared over time, with scores retaining the same interpretation regardless of the specific administration.
Many jurisdictions are still in the process of grading the written components of the legacy bar exam; once this process is completed, bar exam scores will be calculated and passing decisions reported by those jurisdictions.
NCBE will release the national mean score for the inaugural July 2026 NextGen UBE in early October. Grading of constructed-response questions is currently in progress; once this is completed, NCBE will finalize the remaining scoring and quality-control processes required for score release.
Unlike the legacy UBE, the NextGen UBE is designed and scored as an integrated examination. Although it is administered in three testing sections, examinees receive one composite NextGen UBE score on a scale of 500 to 750. Separate scores are not reported for individual sections or item types.
Bar examination pass rates are posted on the NCBE website as jurisdictions report their results.
[1] The first-time and repeat MBE-based test taker information calculated by NCBE is an approximation based on the NCBE Number and biographic data, which has not been used consistently in all jurisdictions across time. July 2025 examinees who sat for the California bar exam in February 2025 (which did not include the MBE) and who had not previously taken a bar exam will appear as first-time test takers in NCBE’s July 2025 data. Prior to 2022, approximately 10% of examinees could not be tracked with certainty by NCBE as either first-time or repeat takers due to a lack of sufficient biographic information.
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About the National Conference of Bar Examiners
The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, is a not-for-profit corporation founded in 1931. NCBE promotes fairness, integrity, and best practices in bar admissions for the benefit and protection of the public, in pursuit of its vision of a competent, ethical, and diverse legal profession. Best known for developing bar exam content used by 54 US jurisdictions, NCBE serves admission authorities, courts, the legal education community, and candidates by providing high-quality assessment products, services, and research; character investigations; and informational and educational resources and programs. For more information, visit the NCBE website at https://www.ncbex.org.
About the Multistate Bar Examination
The Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) is a six-hour, 200-question multiple-choice examination developed by NCBE and administered by user jurisdictions as part of the bar examination, typically given twice each year. The purpose of the MBE is to assess the extent to which an examinee can apply fundamental legal principles and legal reasoning to analyze given fact patterns. The subjects tested on the MBE are Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law and Procedure, Evidence, Real Property, and Torts. In addition to assessing examinee knowledge and skills, the MBE is used to equate the bar exam. Equating is a statistical procedure used for most large-scale standardized tests to ensure that exam scores retain the same meaning across administrations and over time. More information about the MBE is available on the NCBE website at https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mbe/.