Starting in 2026, the State Exam will undergo a complete overhaul. The Council of Ministers has approved the decree reforming the final exam for the upper secondary school cycle, as announced last spring by the Minister of Education and Merit, Giuseppe Valditara.
The first novelty concerns the name: the exam will officially return to being called "Maturity Exam”, recalling the symbolic value of a rite of passage that has distinguished it for decades.
The main innovations of the new final exam
The changes focus primarily on the oral exam, which is set to undergo substantial changes. Here are the main changes.
- Four subjects in the interviewThe entire curriculum will no longer be offered, but only four subjects selected by the minister in January each year. According to initial reports, Italian and mathematics (or Latin and Greek for classical high schools) will always be included.
- Stop at the initial document: the material selected by the commission (photos, texts, documents) that until now served as a starting point for the interview disappears.
- Binding value of the oral: anyone who refuses to take it will automatically fail, even if the written tests and credits are sufficient for promotion.
- Written tests and “light” commissionsThe written tests, however, will remain substantially unchanged: Italian as the first test and the major subject as the second. However, the composition of the examination boards will change, making them "lighter," meaning lighter than traditional exams.
- Greater weight on PCTO and conductParticular attention will be given to the experiences of Pathways for Transversal Skills and Orientation (PCTO), which will be fully included in the evaluation of the oral interview. Furthermore, students with a sufficient mark in conduct (6) will have to face an additional test: a paper dedicated to civic education and active citizenship.
The reasons for the reform
The crackdown on oral exams was also designed to prevent incidents like those that occurred during the 2025 final exams, when some students chose not to appear for the final interview, confident they had already passed. With the new regulations, similar behavior will inevitably lead to failure.
With this reform, the government aims to restore greater seriousness and centrality to the final exam, strengthening its educational and symbolic value.
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