Religion and God are not only marking this Wednesday's news with the visit of Pope Leo XIV, but they have also made an appearance in this year's PAU philosophy exam. Students who chose this subject –the history test was also held first thing in the morning– had to analyze how the statement "God is dead" would be evaluated from the perspective of two prominent Western philosophy authors. "It was an easy question because we had all worked on it," admitted a student from Premià de Mar high school as she left the exam at UPF.

Joy and some relief at the end of the first PAU exam of this 2026. After the pressure of whether the arrival at the tests would be complicated due to mobility restrictions for the Pope's visit and the teachers' strike, most students have left satisfied with the Spanish language and literature exam. "It was very chill —easy to pass—," one of the students taking the selectivity at UPF replied to her teacher. An exam in which reading comprehension was based on the adaptation of the text The Utility of the Useless. Manifesto, in which the Italian philosopher Nuccio Ordine reflects on how in recent decades humanities have been considered "useless", even in state budgets.

Coinciding with the start of university pre-registration, UNPORTAL and ARA offer you a search engine with the offering of university degrees that are taught next academic year at the 12 Catalan universities (the 8 that participate in the pre-registration system and the 4 that apply their own admission processes) to help you choose your studies.

Unlike last year, in this year's university entrance exams (PAU) there will be no major changes either in the format of the exams or in the correction criteria. The exams on June 9, 10, and 11 will be marked by an unprecedented context, both due to the Pope's visit and the open conflict between teachers and administration which, according to the Government, will not affect the selectivity. Also because it will be the first edition in which mobile phone detectors and electronic devices will be used to prevent students from cheating. This Friday, more details have emerged on how these devices will be used, which can detect radio frequency signals from a mobile phone or any device with wifi or Bluetooth connection, such as a wireless microphone or a smartwatch. There will be them in all universities, but not in all classrooms. They will be randomly distributed and, in case of suspicion, the exam proctor may request that one be brought.

The Pope's visit to Catalonia, which counts on Montserrat and Sagrada Família as world emblems of Christian pilgrimage, coincides with the selectivity exams of our hardworking and always most tender adolescents. Among these students, do not doubt it, there are —there must be— our substitutes and who knows if the Pope's own.

Notable news in the university entrance exams that will be held next month: for the first time, detectors will be used to prevent students from cheating on the PAU using electronic devices. As explained in a circular from the Interuniversity Council of Catalonia, which has been sent to the institutes, in the exams to be held on June 9, 10, and 11, "the organization may use electronic device detectors during the test."

A significant change is coming to the university admissions process in Catalonia. Starting in 2027, the extraordinary sitting of the University Entrance Exams (PAU) – for those who did not pass the June exams or wish to improve their scores – will no longer be held in September but in July. This Friday, the board of the Inter-University Council of Catalonia (CIC) – the coordinating body between the Catalan Government and the twelve Catalan universities – agreed that 2026 will be the last year in which the PAU resits are held in September. With this change, Catalonia aligns itself with the rest of Spain's autonomous communities, as it was the only region that still held the university entrance exams in September. According to a statement from the Department of Research and Universities, the measure follows the same approach already applied to other educational levels (primary, secondary, and upper secondary), where extraordinary exam sessions are not held in September. In fact, nowadays, university degrees don't offer resits in September either. Furthermore, the government also argues that one of the main positive effects of the agreement is that it will allow pre-registration and September course assignments to be brought forward by a few weeks, and therefore, university enrollment can be finalized earlier. In addition, one of the most important changes will be that all students will be able to start university at the same time – in mid-September – regardless of whether they passed the first or second sitting of the university entrance exams. Finally, the CIC also argues that, if students take the resit exams, they will have a much more recent understanding of the subjects because they will have taken the entrance exams just a month before, and "this temporal proximity can contribute to better academic performance." In the last extraordinary sitting of the University Entrance Exams (PAU) in September, 8,237 students registered, representing 18.5% of the total number of students registered in the ordinary sitting in June, in which 44,388 students registered. Peace 2026

Regarding next year's university entrance exams (PAU) – those of 2026 – the regular session will be held on Tuesday, June 9, Wednesday, June 10, and Thursday, June 11, while the resit session will take place on Wednesday, September 2, Thursday, September 3, and Friday, September 4. As for the content and marking criteria, there will be no changes; they will remain the same as those used in the last exams.

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This is the main fear of the tens of thousands of students who take the entrance exam each year: Not obtaining the grade that would open the doors to studying the university degree they wantNow, however, a report has quantified this fear: last year, almost half of the university students in Spain did not gain admission to their first-choice degree program. Specifically, according to the study by the Knowledge and Development Foundation (CyD), 245,226 places were offered for undergraduate degrees at public universities in the 2024-2025 academic year, an offer that received 474,319 applications. Therefore, last year, 229,053 students across Spain were unable to access their first-choice degree program. Behind these figures lie two key factors, also highlighted in the report. On the one hand, the document points out that the number of university degrees offered by public universities has remained stable in recent years, and on the other, that the demand for access to degree programs has grown by 26% in the last decade nationwide. Public universities offering in-person instruction show a mismatch between supply and demand: while applications for degree programs have increased by 25.9%, the number of available places has decreased slightly (-0.6%)," the study's authors report.

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Choppy sound, overlapping speeches, and constant "I can't hear you," "I can't hear you," "I can't understand you." This was the situation experienced by the nearly 700 teachers who logged on last week to the information session about the evaluation criteria for the Catalan language exams in preparation for the university entrance exams next June. Beyond the meeting's technical problems, several teachers complained that the session's content was less enlightening than expected and that some of the criteria introduced in last year's university entrance exams "don't make sense." According to teachers from DocentsCAT—which includes more than a hundred Catalan language teachers—and the Pere Quart Collective—the group of teachers who have been advocating for Catalan literature in the classroom for the past ten years—two aspects particularly concern them: the large number of people Required readings have been removed from the curriculum And the fact that the syntax exercises don't stipulate that it's necessary to use the new grammar of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC).

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