Students will take 2 elective subjects out of the remaining 9 subjects studied in grade 12, including: Foreign Language, History, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geography, Economic & Legal Education, Informatics, Technology.
The exam time for subject 1 is from 7:35 AM to 8:25 AM; subject 2 is from 8:40 AM to 9:30 AM.
To ensure exam security, each elective subject will have 48 exam codes, divided equally into two time slots. Candidates taking the 1st session will be issued exam codes from 1 - 24, and the 2nd session will take exam codes from 25 - 48. In previous years, exam questions for all subjects had 24 codes (except for essay Literature).
The Ministry of Education and Training also requires collecting papers by exam room, not by subject as in previous years.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Education and Training, in the social sciences group, History dominated with 570,800 registered candidates. Next is the Geography exam with 448,725 registered students.
Meanwhile, in the natural science group, Physics has 389,630 registered candidates, Chemistry with 253,966 candidates, Biology has 70,303 students. Foreign language is also a subject with many students choosing, with 347,455 registered candidates.
Subjects such as Informatics, Industrial Technology and Agricultural Technology have fewer registered candidates, respectively 18,691, 7,402 and 31,091 registered candidates. However, compared to the previous year, the number of candidates in this group has increased significantly.
Compared to 2025, the subjects with the highest number of candidates registering for the graduation exam include Mathematics (an increase of 58,731 candidates), Literature (an increase of 56,669 candidates), History (an increase of 71,433 candidates) and Physics (an increase of 35,332 candidates).
The 2026 high school graduation exam took place on June 11-12 with more than 1.22 million candidates, also a record to date.
A noteworthy new point in this year's enrollment is that no matter what method of university admission is used, candidates must achieve 15 or more points in the graduation exam according to a combination of 3 subjects.
The time to announce the high school graduation exam scores in 2026 is July 1st, about 12 days earlier than in 2025.
