Reuters, New Bar Exam Shaves Three Hours Off Testing Time:

The new bar exam set to debut in July 2026 will be about three hours shorter than the current one.

The National Conference of Bar Examiners, which is now designing and pilot testing the NextGen Bar Exam, said that it will be a nine-hour test administered over the course of one-and-a-half days. By contrast, the existing Uniform Bar Exam used by 41 jurisdictions is about 12 hours long over two days.

Law.com, Current Bar Exam Will Sunset After July 2027 Administration:

A year after the new bar exam, NextGen, is released in July 2026, the current bar exam will officially sunset.

The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) recently announced that after the NextGen exam launches in July 2026, the July 2027 bar exam will be the last administration of the current NCBE bar exam—also known as the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE)—which includes the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE), Multistate Essay Examination (MEE) and Multistate Performance Test (MPT), according to NCBE’s announcement.

The Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE), a separate attorney ethics test, will not be affected by this change.