Portugal's First Digital Exam-Grading Run Stumbles Into a 'Recovery Phase' Days Before the 14 July Results

Portugal's first attempt at grading national secondary-school exams digitally has run into trouble. The Júri Nacional de Exames (National Exams Jury) confirmed that the new system for turning students' handwritten answers into on-screen scripts for teacher-markers has hit technical difficulties, entering what it described as a "fase de recuperação" (recovery phase). Scripts began reaching graders only gradually from Monday 30 June, "as responses are processed."

The stakes are concrete: first-phase results are due on 14 July, and the national competition for a place at a public university or polytechnic — the Concurso Nacional de Acesso — opens just six days later, on 20 July. Any slippage in marking threatens to ripple straight through the calendar that decides where tens of thousands of 18-year-olds spend the next three years.

What changed this year

2026 is the first year that exam answers are written by hand on special sheets and then scanned, with teachers correcting the digitised versions on screen rather than marking paper booklets. The change was meant to speed up and standardise grading. Every national exam has moved to the new workflow except two practical papers — Geometria Descritiva A (Descriptive Geometry A) and Desenho A (Drawing A) — where the format makes digitisation impractical.

It is the digitising-and-distributing step, not the marking itself, that jammed. The Jury moved to reassure schools and teachers, asking them to "await new information calmly," and insisted that each exam code still gets its normal correction window — typically ten working days — with the final classification deadline of 10 July unchanged.

A big cohort and a tight funnel

The pressure is amplified by the numbers. Some 166,339 students registered to sit first-phase exams between 16 and 26 June, of whom 93,596 — about 56% — are using them to apply to higher education. Exam grades are weighted into the application score alongside secondary-school marks, so a late or disputed classification can change which course a student qualifies for.

For 2026/27, public higher education is offering 56,790 places through the general national-access route (34,841 at universities and 21,949 at polytechnics), part of a record 78,283 vacancies overall — 1,465 more than the previous year. The government has steered extra places toward shortage areas: Medicine rises to 1,656 seats (up 62) and Basic Education degrees to 1,344 (up 147), reflecting the push to train more doctors and teachers.

What This Means for Expats

• Mark the July calendar. First-phase results land on 14 July and the national application window opens on 20 July. Families with a child finishing the 12th year should be ready to act in that short window.
• Know which route applies. The Concurso Nacional de Acesso is the main public route; there are separate special contingents (for example for emigrants and students with disabilities) and private and international institutions run their own admissions outside it.
• Competitive courses leave no slack. Medicine and other high-demand degrees turn on tenths of a point, so a delayed or re-checked exam grade matters most here. Students can request a review of a contested classification.
• If results slip, the second phase is the backstop. A second exam phase runs in July, with its own later application round — useful if a first-phase grade disappoints or arrives late.
• Plan the school path early. Parents newer to the system should read our guides to schools for expat parents and to enrolling in a public school; non-EU students arriving to study should see the D4 student-visa guide.

The Jury's message is that the timetable still holds and that the recovery phase is a hiccup, not a derailment. Students and parents will know for certain on 14 July, when the first-phase grades — the gateway to the universities ranked in the latest QS tables — are finally published.