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 from 5 to 20 January 2027 for all specialties, with a second window from 10 to 18 February 2027 for applicants to GP and/or Core Psychiatry only.

From 2027 you can make at most five applications in a recruitment round. If you were planning to apply widely, the choice of specialties needs settling before Oriel opens. The dates below are the published national 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 the day after applications close. If you believe that result is wrong, the deadline for requesting a review is 17:00 UK time on 24 November. That is a firm cut-off. A second review window, before offers, runs from 19 to 26 February 2027. The live rules and review dates are on NHS England's prioritisation page.

The 2027 priority group is now fixed. The regulations made on 10 September 2026 kept the 2026 immigration-status route and added no route based on NHS experience, so trust-grade or LED experience does not move you into the priority group. Our Prioritisation Act guide covers the categories.

Booking follows your MSRA invitation

The national Round 1 timeline covers applications, interviews and the main offer deadlines. NHS England gives the MSRA windows as 5 to 20 January and 10 to 18 February 2027. Specialty pages can quote their own version: Core Surgery's page lists 5 to 18 January 2027. Where the dates differ, your specialty's page and your invitation are the ones to follow.

Invitations follow the application and eligibility checks. For GP, they are expected by 14 December 2026 for the January sitting and by 21 December for February. You then book through your Pearson Professional Examinations account from the appointments available for your allocation, and if you are based in the UK you sit at a UK centre. The format is unchanged: Professional Dilemmas takes 95 minutes and Clinical Problem Solving 75, for 170 minutes in total. 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.

February is for GP and Core Psychiatry applicants only

The February window is reserved for applicants who apply only to GP, Core Psychiatry or both. Anyone who also applies to another MSRA specialty sits in January. Allocation depends on capacity, so a GP or Core Psychiatry applicant can still be placed in January, and an allocation cannot be changed once made. A GP-only application gives you no entitlement to February. The 2026 cycle used the same split, with windows from 6 to 19 January and 12 to 25 February.

2027 Round 3 runs from 13 to 29 July 2027 for January to March 2028 starts

Round 1 is the main recruitment round for the 2027 intake. The NHS England table now labels the later process as 2027 Round 3: applications run from 13 to 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.