TARA test dates & registration 2026/27

There are two TARA sittings for 2026/27 entry:

12–16 October 2026 and 4–8 January 2027. Oxford only ever uses the October sitting.

UCL lets applicants choose either one. Registration for the cycle opens 1 June 2026, and booking for the October sitting opens 20 July 2026 and closes 28 September 2026, 6pm BST.

You can register free and start working through the practice bank while you wait for your window to open, so the dates below aren't the only thing on your to-do list.

Both sittings, laid out in order, with every date and time as UAT-UK publish them on their deadlines page, so you can see where the two sittings overlap and where they diverge.

If you want the same information anchored to your specific university rather than a merged sequence, the Oxford-specific dates and UCL-specific dates are broken out separately in each course guide.

Most explanations of TARA dates treat the two universities as interchangeable, listing one set of dates and leaving you to assume they apply everywhere. They don't.

Oxford and UCL run TARA under the same UAT-UK system, but with materially different rules about which sitting you're allowed to use and, it appears, slightly different deadlines within the October window itself.

Both universities publish their own confirmation of this: see Oxford's official admissions tests page and UCL's official tests, tasks and interviews page directly, alongside the university-specific breakdowns in our own Oxford TARA guide and UCL TARA guide.

Here's the detail:

The course-list difference is stark. Oxford's ten TARA courses are all humanities- or social-science-adjacent.

UCL's six courses are the exact opposite:

Computer Science, Computer Science and Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering and Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, with no social science course left on the list — see what changed at UCL for 2027 entry — so don't assume TARA is only relevant to humanities applicants just because Oxford's list reads that way.

If you're unsure whether your specific course needs TARA at all, check your course's own admissions page rather than inferring it from a general list like this one; UCL's own Computer Science TARA page is a good example of what that looks like in practice.

The practical version: book as soon as the window opens on 20 July, and treat 28 September as the wall rather than the plan.

If you need a bursary, work back a week to 21 September; if you need access arrangements, a week further to 14 September.

Those times are BST for the October sitting and GMT for January's equivalents, which is an hour's difference if you're working from outside the UK.

Confirm all of them on the official UAT-UK deadlines page at the point you register, since that's the number that will actually be enforced. Once your slot is actually booked, you can stop worrying about dates and start practicing for free instead.

We'd previously flagged this as unclear, since older pages float figures anywhere from £75–78 (UK and Republic of Ireland) and £130–133 (elsewhere).

UAT-UK's own registration page now gives a single confirmed current figure:

£78 for UK and Republic of Ireland candidates, and £133 for candidates sitting elsewhere. That's the number to budget against.

Fees can still change between now and when you actually book — test administrator fees generally do, year on year — so treat £78/£133 as the current confirmed figure rather than a permanently fixed one, and follow the link through to UAT-UK's page for the live number at the point you register.

For how this fee compares against the rest of what a full TARA prep plan might cost, our pillar guide's dates & fees section puts it in context.

If cost is a genuine barrier, UAT-UK offers bursary vouchers for UK candidates in financial need, which cover the test fee in full.

Applications for both the October 2026 and January 2027 sittings open on 1 June 2026 — the same date accounts open, not a separate later window — and close on 21 September 2026, 6pm BST for October and 14 December 2026, 6pm GMT for January, a week before booking closes in each case.

Access arrangements follow the same pattern a week earlier again:

14 September 2026 for October, 7 December 2026 for January. All of those dates are published on UAT-UK's own deadlines page.

This isn't a discount you apply for after paying; it's a voucher that replaces the fee entirely for candidates who qualify.

Exact eligibility criteria aren't detailed there, so the reliable next step is to check the bursary section of the official UAT-UK site, or ask your school or sixth form's admissions or widening-participation contact, well before that deadline — a voucher application is not something to leave until the last few days of the window.

Once your fee situation is settled, our complete dates & fees guide covers how this slots into the rest of the registration process.

We haven't found a published, UAT-UK-specific process for what happens if you miss a booking deadline, so we won't invent one here.

What we can say with confidence:

TARA only runs at fixed sittings, so missing the October window for a course that requires it doesn't mean a quiet makeup slot later in the autumn — your realistic options are the January sitting, if your university offers it (remember, that's UCL's flexibility, not Oxford's), or contacting your university's admissions office directly to ask what they recommend.

For an Oxford application, where October is the only sitting, a missed deadline is a more serious problem worth raising with admissions immediately rather than waiting to see what happens.

The safest approach across the board is the boring one: book in the first week or two of the window rather than close to the 28 September deadline, so a slow bank transfer, a technical hiccup, or a forgotten form doesn't cost you the sitting entirely.

While you wait for your slot, there's no reason to wait to prepare — you can register free and start the practice bank today.

Results are released through your UAT-UK online account rather than emailed to you directly, and a copy goes to every university you applied to that requires TARA — you don't need to forward anything yourself.

For the October 2026 sitting, Oxford has confirmed results land on 16 November 2026, which is roughly four to five weeks after testing ends on 16 October. UAT-UK give 8 February 2027 for the January sitting, the same gap after that window closes on 8 January.

Both dates sit on UAT-UK's deadlines page, alongside the rest of the calendar for TARA itself.

Your score report shows Critical Thinking and Problem Solving as two separate numbers on their own 1.0–9.0 scales, plus a copy of your Writing Task response for each university to read.

For what those numbers actually mean, and how to read your own score without overclaiming, see our TARA results explained guide.