MSRA 2027 dates and Oriel timeline

Round 1 applications open at 10:00 on 22 October 2026 and close at 16:00 on 19 November 2026. The MSRA runs in January and February 2027, although NHS England had not published the exact exam-window dates by 3 August 2026.

The split sometimes quoted for those months belongs to the 2026 cycle. That arrangement put all MSRA specialties in January and reserved February for applicants to GP, Core Psychiatry or both, subject to capacity. No equivalent allocation rule or set of window dates had been published for 2027. The dates below are the published recruitment milestones.

Round 1 opens on 22 October 2026

Our Oriel walkthrough puts the form, status review and offer decisions in date order.

For 2027 recruitment, NHS England says the application form will collect the information used to determine priority status automatically and Oriel will display the result. If you believe that result is wrong, the deadline for requesting a review is 17:00 UK time on 24 November, before shortlisting begins. That is a firm cut-off. The live rules and review dates are on NHS England's prioritisation page.

The definition of the 2027 priority group may still change. The government expected regulations on significant NHS experience and/or immigration status in early autumn 2026, but no text was available on this page's update date. If you are relying on trust-grade or LED experience, you will need to check the linked NHS England page again before you submit.

The MSRA and booking windows remain unpublished

The national Round 1 timeline covers applications, interviews and the main offer deadlines. The start and end of the January and February 2027 MSRA windows, and the booking window around them, had not been published.

Booking invitations follow the application and eligibility checks, and you then book through Pearson VUE from the appointments available for your allocation. Your invitation in Oriel gives the instruction that applies to you, while the NHS England MSRA page provides the details to cross-check. A date copied from somebody else's specialty page may belong to another sitting.

The 2026 split does not set the 2027 GP and Psychiatry dates

For the 2026 cycle, February was intended for applicants who applied only to GP, Core Psychiatry or both. Anyone who also applied to another MSRA specialty was allocated to January. NHS England made that arrangement capacity-conditional: if February filled up, some GP and Core Psychiatry applicants could be moved to January. NHS England had not issued the matching rule for 2027 by 3 August 2026. A GP-only application therefore gives you no published entitlement to February; on this page's update date, NHS England had not said whether you would sit in January or February.

2026 Round 3 closes on 29 July 2027 for January to March 2028 starts

Round 1 is the main recruitment round for the 2027 intake. The NHS England table labels the later process as 2026 Round 3: applications close on 29 July 2027 and it appoints to posts starting from January to March 2028. The process is specialty-agnostic: NHS England says that not all specialties will advertise and that it is not limited to CT1/ST1 or ST3/ST4. The vacancies depend on the adverts published for that process, so a Round 1 specialty list cannot tell you what will appear later. Round 1 feeds the 2027 intake; the process closing in July 2027 does not.