The LEK exam in English: format, pass mark, registration and dates
The Polish Final Medical Examination in English — 200 questions, a 56% pass mark, SMK registration, and the 400 zł fee for foreign-language sittings.
kursnalek editorial team
If you are graduating from an English-language medical programme in Poland, the LEK — Lekarski Egzamin Końcowy, the Final Medical Examination — stands between you and the right to practise. This is what it involves, when to register, what it costs, and one structural fact about it that decides more of your score than anything you will revise in the final month.
The paper
| Questions | 200 |
| Options per question | 5, one correct |
| Time | 4 hours |
| Pass mark | 56% — 112 points |
| Negative marking | None |
| Languages | Polish or English |
There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so leave nothing blank. That much is simple.
Registration and deadlines
Applications go through the System Monitorowania Kształcenia (SMK) at smk.ezdrowie.gov.pl. You need a registered and verified account there before you can submit anything, and verification is not instant — do not leave it to the final week.
| Session | Application deadline |
|---|---|
| Autumn (September) | 15 July |
| Spring (February) | 30 November of the preceding year |
If you are reading this in the second half of 2026, the September sitting has already closed. Your next date is the spring 2027 session in February, and the application deadline is 30 November 2026. Confirm the exact examination date with CEM once it is published.
What it costs
The first attempt is free. From the second attempt onwards there is a fee, and this is where the English-language route differs:
| Application in Polish | 250 zł |
| Application in a foreign language | 400 zł |
The fee falls due within five days of the application deadline. Worth knowing before you plan a resit — and candidates re-sit this exam more often than you might expect, which the next section explains.
Almost everyone passes. That is not good news
From the spring 2026 session: 11,030 candidates, 10,677 passes — a 96.8% pass rate. Only 353 people in the entire country fell below the threshold.
So “will I pass?” is, for most candidates, the wrong question. The exam decides something else: what score you carry into the residency ranking. Your percentage result is what competitive specialties are allocated on.
The clearest evidence is in the data itself. Candidates re-sitting averaged 160.09 points against 152.57 for first-time sitters. Since almost everyone passes first time, most of those re-sitters had already passed — and came back purely for a better number.
Where the English-language cohort actually stands
The same session, by group:
| Mean score | Pass rate | |
|---|---|---|
| National | 157.09 | 96.8% |
| Graduates of foreign universities | 141.92 | 89.6% |
| Sitting the exam in English | 133.65 | 81.7% |
Nearly one in five candidates sitting in English did not pass, against roughly one in thirty-one nationally. The mean is 23 points below the national figure.
This is not because the English paper is harder. It is a translation of the same exam.
The structural reason — and what to do about it
Under the amendment of 16 July 2020, 140 of the 200 questions on every LEK paper are drawn from a question base that CEM publishes openly. The remaining 60 are new. Polish students work through that base before the exam; it is the single highest-yield thing anyone can do.
The base is published in Polish.
So is most of the required reading. CEM names the specific textbooks each field is written from, and the canonical ones — Interna Szczeklika for internal medicine, Bręborowicz for obstetrics, Gałecki for psychiatry — have no English edition. The exam gets translated for you; the preparation material does not.
That is a substantial part of the 23-point gap. It is a problem of access rather than ability, which is exactly why it is worth attacking directly instead of simply revising harder.
One thing works strongly in your favour. Questions repeat. In each of the last three LEK sittings, more than nine out of ten had already appeared in an earlier session — between 91% and 95%. The exam is reassembled, not rewritten. The set you need to master is finite, published and countable: roughly 2,465 questions across ten fields.
Put those two facts together and the strategy writes itself. Work through the published base in a language you can actually think in, understanding why each distractor is wrong rather than memorising letters — because that understanding is what carries over to the 60 questions you cannot see in advance.
Where to start
- What the CEM question base contains — all ten fields, question counts and the official reading list for each.
- The spring 2026 results in full — every university and cohort, and how the figures were checked.
- Free LEK mock exam in English — the complete Spring 2026 paper, 200 real CEM questions in CEM’s own English wording, scored, with a full answer review.
The Spring 2026 paper is already free in English. Our wider question bank and the study platform are still in Polish, and we are working through them — same questions, same keys, official wording.
Sources: Centre for Medical Examinations (CEM) — LEK statistics for the spring 2026 session, the published question base and the official reading list; the Act on the Professions of Physician and Dentist as amended on 16 July 2020. Figures verified against CEM’s published totals. Deadlines and fees change: confirm current details with CEM before you apply.
Frequently asked questions
Can I sit the LEK exam in English?
Yes. The Final Medical Examination (Lekarski Egzamin Końcowy) is administered in English for graduates of English-language medical programmes. It is the same exam, translated. The application fee differs: a foreign-language sitting costs 400 zł against 250 zł for the Polish-language paper, and the first attempt is free in both cases.
What is the pass mark for LEK?
You need at least 56% of the maximum score — 112 points out of 200. There is no negative marking. In practice the threshold is not the real target: 96.8% of candidates passed in spring 2026, and your percentage score feeds directly into the residency ranking.
How do I register for LEK?
Registration is entirely electronic, through the System Monitorowania Kształcenia (SMK) at smk.ezdrowie.gov.pl. You need a registered and verified SMK account. Applications close on 15 July for the autumn session and on 30 November of the preceding year for the spring session.
How many LEK questions come from the published base?
70% — that is 140 of the 200 questions on the paper. They are drawn from a question base that CEM publishes openly, and the remaining 60 are new and unpublished. The rule follows the agreement of 8 February 2018 between the Minister of Health and the Residents' Agreement of the OZZL, enacted in the amendment of 16 July 2020.
Sit a mock exam from the CEM base
A free test built from official CEM questions — 200 from the Spring 2026 session, with your score and the correct answer after each one. The exam itself is in Polish.