TOEFL 2026 Exam: A Complete Guide to the New Test Format

It’s January 2026. You open the ETS website to check the details of the TOEFL exam you’ve been preparing for for three months. And then you see it: a completely different test. No integrated tasks. No essay. No note-taking in Listening. The scoring scale, instead of the familiar 0–120, now shows bands 1–6. You feel the ground slip from under your feet. Everything you practiced, all the strategies from YouTube tutorials, all the notes from prep courses, suddenly seem useless.

Breathe. The new TOEFL 2026 is not a disaster; it’s an opportunity. The test is shorter (85 minutes instead of two hours), more practical (emails, conversations, announcements instead of academic essays), and, let’s be honest, closer to how you actually use English when studying abroad. ETS has redesigned the exam from the ground up to better measure real communication skills. And that means if you can genuinely speak and write in English, the new format will help you, not hurt you.

In this guide, we break down the new TOEFL 2026 into its core components, from the structure of each section, through the adaptive system, to specific preparation strategies for Polish high school graduates. We’ll show you how the new format differs from the old, how the new 1–6 scale works, how much time you need to prepare, and where to register. If you’re planning to study in the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, or anywhere else where a language certificate is required, read on.

What is the New TOEFL 2026?

On January 21, 2026, ETS (Educational Testing Service) – the organization behind TOEFL for over 60 years – launched a completely redesigned TOEFL iBT exam. This wasn’t a minor update. It was a revolution. The format, task types, scoring system, duration, virtually everything changed. The only things that remained were the name and the four sections: Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing.

Why did ETS decide on such a radical change? There are several reasons. First, the old TOEFL wasn’t keeping up with reality. Integrated tasks (read text + listen to lecture + write essay) were academic in theory but disconnected from how students actually communicate at universities. Second, competition – IELTS was gaining increasing market share, especially in Europe, thanks to its shorter format and more practical tasks. Third, the development of AI technology enabled automatic scoring of speaking and writing, which allowed for results to be delivered in 72 hours instead of 6–10 days.

The new TOEFL lasts approximately 85 minutes – almost half the length of the old format. The Speaking section is just 8 minutes (two tasks), and Writing is 23 minutes (three tasks). Reading and Listening are adaptive; the difficulty of questions adjusts to your level in real-time. This is a fundamental change in philosophy: instead of bombarding you with difficult questions for two hours, the test quickly determines your level and focuses on precise measurement.

The most important change concerns the scoring system. The new TOEFL introduces a band scale of 1–6, directly linked to the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference) levels. Band 1 corresponds to A1, and band 6 to C2. During a two-year transition period (until 2028), scores will be reported on both the new 1–6 scale and the traditional 0–120 scale, to give universities time to adapt. This is a clever move, meaning your score will be immediately comparable to IELTS, Cambridge, and other CEFR-based exams.

For Polish high school graduates planning to study at Oxford, Cambridge, ETH Zurich, or Sciences Po, the new format is essentially good news. The test is more aligned with everyday language use, is shorter, and delivers results faster. You just have to forget what you knew about the old TOEFL and learn the new one from scratch.

Exam Structure, Section by Section

The new TOEFL 2026 consists of four sections: Reading, Listening, Speaking, and Writing. Each section contains completely new task types that were not present on the old TOEFL. Let’s go through them one by one.

Reading, up to 27 minutes, 35–48 questions

The Reading section in the new TOEFL features three task types, unlike before, when it had two long academic passages with multiple-choice questions. The section is adaptive, meaning the number and difficulty of questions depend on your level.

1. Complete the Words You receive a paragraph from an academic text where 10 words have missing letters. Your task: complete the missing letters to reconstruct the correct word. This task tests academic vocabulary and the ability to recognize words in context. It’s not a dictation; you see the sentence context and part of the letters, so it’s about pattern recognition. For Polish students, this might be surprising, as this type of task is not present in any exam familiar from the Polish educational system.

2. Read in Daily Life Short, practical texts: emails, announcements, menus, flyers, campus communications, ranging from 15 to 150 words. Each text is followed by 1–2 multiple-choice questions. This is an absolute novelty; the old TOEFL had nothing similar. The task tests the ability to quickly extract information from everyday texts that you’ll encounter while studying abroad. Do you need to sign up for a course? Understand dormitory regulations? Read a class schedule? This task checks exactly that.

3. Read an Academic Passage A passage of about ~200 words (significantly shorter than the old 700-word texts!) with 5 multiple-choice questions. Topics include natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences. This task is the closest to the old format, but the text is much shorter, and the questions are more precise. You no longer have to wade through a wall of text; instead, you need to quickly grasp the main thesis and details of a shorter excerpt.

Listening, up to 27 minutes, 35–45 questions

The Listening section has also undergone a metamorphosis. The biggest change: you cannot take notes. On the old TOEFL, note-taking was a key strategy; now you must rely on short-term memory and active listening skills. The section is adaptive.

1. Listen and Choose a Response You hear short statements or questions and must choose the most appropriate response from the options. This is a quick, dynamic task testing comprehension at the level of individual conversational exchanges. Think of it as a real campus conversation: someone says something to you, and you must react appropriately.

2. Listen to a Conversation An approximately 10-turn conversation (e.g., a student with a registrar’s office employee, a student with a professor) with multiple-choice questions after it concludes. Conversations cover typical academic scenarios: scheduling consultations, asking about course rules, solving administrative problems. The tone is natural, with colloquial vocabulary.

3. Listen to an Announcement A campus or lecture hall announcement, changes in class schedules, organizational information, event announcements. Questions check whether you caught the key details: when, where, what needs to be done.

4. Listen to an Academic Talk A short lecture, 100–250 words in length, with multiple-choice questions. This is the closest task to the old format, but the lectures are significantly shorter. Topics include natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities – a typical lecture excerpt you might hear in your first year of university. Remember: you are not taking notes, so you must actively listen and memorize the structure of the argumentation.

Speaking, up to 8 minutes, 2 tasks

Here, the change is the most radical. The old TOEFL had 4 Speaking tasks (including 3 integrated tasks: read, listen, speak). The new TOEFL has only 2 tasks, and none are integrated. Scoring is done by AI.

1. Listen and Repeat (7 sentences) You hear 7 sentences related to campus life or everyday situations, and you must repeat them as accurately as possible. This is not a test of creative speaking; it’s a test of pronunciation, intonation, accent, and fluency. The AI system analyzes whether your pronunciation is understandable to native speakers, whether you maintain the natural rhythm of the sentence, and whether you correctly stress syllables.

For Polish students, this task can be surprisingly difficult. Polish has a different accentuation pattern (almost always on the penultimate syllable), a different rhythm (syllable-timed vs. stress-timed in English), and several sounds that don’t exist in Polish (th, r, schwa). Practice repeating sentences on prepclass.io with AI feedback that will show you exactly where your pronunciation deviates from the pattern.

2. Take an Interview (4 questions) You are given 4 questions – each with a 45-second limit for your answer. There is no preparation time; the question is asked, and you must speak immediately. Questions relate to your experience, opinions, plans – “Describe a situation where you had to solve a problem in a group,” “What is more important when choosing a university, location or rankings?”, “Tell me about a book that influenced you.”

This task tests spontaneity and fluency of expression. It’s not about perfect grammar; it’s about whether you can organize your thoughts in 45 seconds, speak without long pauses, and construct a coherent answer. Polish students often lose points because they try to formulate an “ideal” answer in their head before they start speaking, wasting 10–15 seconds of silence.

Writing (23 minutes), 3 tasks

The Writing section consists of three short tasks instead of two longer ones on the old TOEFL. There is no essay. There is no integrated read-listen-write task. Everything is scored by AI.

1. Build a Sentence (6 minutes) You are given scrambled sentence fragments from student exchanges (e.g., messages between students), and you must arrange them in the correct order. This task tests your understanding of English sentence structure, subject-verb-object order, adverb placement, and question word order. For a Polish student, who is accustomed to the flexible word order in Polish, this requires a shift in thinking.

2. Write an Email (7 minutes) You are given a scenario (e.g., “Your professor moved the deadline for an assignment, but you have a conflict with another exam”) and must write an email response in 7 minutes. The task tests the ability to write a formal/semi-formal email, using an appropriate tone, clear structure, and a specific request or piece of information. This is one of the most practical task types in TOEFL history; you will actually write emails like this when studying abroad.

3. Write for an Academic Discussion (10 minutes) This task survived from the old TOEFL, though in a slightly modified form. You receive a question from a professor and responses from two students, and you must write your contribution to an academic discussion. You need to refer to the arguments of other participants, present your own stance, and support it with examples. Expected length: 100–150 words.

The Adaptive System: How It Works

Two sections of the new TOEFL, Reading and Listening, are adaptive. This means that the difficulty of questions changes during the test depending on your answers. If you answer correctly, subsequent questions become more difficult. If you make mistakes, the level decreases. The system aims to precisely determine your level, it doesn’t bombard you with questions that are too easy or too difficult.

How does this affect your score? The key principle: more difficult questions have a higher point value. If the system gives you a difficult question and you answer correctly, your score increases faster than if you answered an easy question. This is why the number of questions is not fixed, ranging from 35–48 (Reading) and 35–45 (Listening). The system may end a section earlier if it confidently determines your level, or give you more questions if your answers are inconsistent.

For a Polish student accustomed to exams with a fixed structure (like the Polish high school exit exam, Matura, or the SAT), this requires mental adaptation. Here are a few rules to remember:

• Don’t panic when questions get harder; it’s a good sign. It means the system is scoring you highly and testing your ceiling.
• Don’t underestimate “easy” questions at the beginning – your initial answers set the difficulty trajectory. A series of early mistakes can push you onto a lower track.
• There’s no going back to previous questions; in adaptive sections, your answer is final. You cannot mark a question for later review.
• Time is flexible but limited – you have up to 27 minutes for the entire section. If you get more questions (because the system needs more data), you’ll need to be faster.
• Don’t guess carelessly; in an adaptive system, an incorrect answer to a difficult question isn’t as costly as one to an easy question. However, a series of guesses will reduce measurement precision and may result in a lower score.

It’s worth comparing this system with the adaptive SAT format, which uses MST (Multistage Adaptive Testing) – the entire second module adjusts based on the first. TOEFL 2026 is more granular; adaptation happens at the level of each question, which provides a more precise measurement, but also means that every answer has an immediate impact on what you see next.

Scoring and Results

The new TOEFL scoring system is probably the most important change from the perspective of universities and candidates. Forget about trying to add up 30+30+30+30 = 120. Now you get a band from 1 to 6 for each section, plus an overall band.

How does the new 1–6 scale work?

Each of the four sections (Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing) is scored on a 1–6 band scale. The overall band is the median or weighted average of your section scores. The bands are directly linked to CEFR, which finally makes TOEFL comparable to IELTS and Cambridge exams on a single, common scale. For European universities, which think in terms of B2/C1/C2, this is a huge simplification.

During the two-year transition period (January 2026 – January 2028), ETS reports scores on both scales: the new 1–6 and the traditional 0–120. This means that if a university requires “minimum 100 TOEFL,” your report will include both the corresponding band (e.g., 5 = C1) and the traditional score (e.g., 103). After 2028, the 0–120 scale will be phased out.

AI in Speaking and Writing Scoring

This is a controversial but fascinating change. The Speaking and Writing sections in the new TOEFL are scored entirely by artificial intelligence. ETS claims that AI models have been trained on millions of scored responses and are at least as consistent as human raters (and more consistent, as they don’t have bad days or fatigue after 200 essays).

What does this mean in practice? First, results are available in 72 hours – instead of 6–10 days for the old TOEFL. Second, the AI system scores according to specific criteria:

• Speaking: pronunciation intelligibility, fluency, intonation, pace, grammatical accuracy
• Writing: text organization, argument development, grammatical accuracy, vocabulary appropriateness, coherence

Critics argue that AI may underestimate unusual but correct answers or penalize accents. ETS responds that the system is audited regularly for bias and that test-takers can request a human review of the score (for an additional fee).

Score reports and sending results

The TOEFL 2026 score report includes: overall band (1–6), section bands, traditional 0–120 score (during the transition period), CEFR descriptors, and detailed information on strengths and weaknesses. You can send your scores to an unlimited number of universities – ETS has eliminated the limit of 4 free score reports. Now you send scores online, and the university receives them electronically within 24–48 hours of the results being issued.

Important: TOEFL iBT scores are valid for 2 years from the exam date. If you plan to start university in the academic year 2027/28, your TOEFL taken in February 2026 will still be valid.

Preparation Strategies for Polish Students

Polish high school graduates have a specific language profile: a strong grammatical foundation (thanks to formal schooling), decent reading comprehension (especially if they read a lot in English), but often weaker pronunciation and speaking fluency. The new TOEFL format rewards precisely those skills where Polish students often have deficiencies. Here’s how to prepare section by section.

Reading, your strongest section

Polish students generally do well with reading. But the new format requires two skills that weren’t as important on the old TOEFL. First, Complete the Words requires recognizing academic words based on letter fragments, and this demands a broad passive vocabulary. Read academic articles on JSTOR, The Guardian, and BBC, and note down new words. Second, Read in Daily Life requires quick processing of short practical texts; practice reading emails, announcements, and communications in English.

Listening, the toughest change: no note-taking

This is a challenge for many Polish students who relied on the “write down everything you hear” strategy on the old TOEFL. You cannot take notes. You must train active listening; listen to academic podcasts (TED Talks, Freakonomics, Radiolab) without pausing and writing things down, and then try to recount the main points from memory. On prepclass.io, you have Listening exercises in the new format with immediate feedback.

Speaking, pronunciation and spontaneity

This is where Polish students lose the most points. Two key areas for improvement:

Pronunciation: English is stress-timed (accent on every 2–3 syllables, the rest are “compressed”), while Polish is syllable-timed (each syllable takes roughly the same amount of time). You need to learn the natural rhythm of English – “Listen and Repeat” tests exactly that. Record yourself and compare it to a native speaker’s pattern. Practice on prepclass.io with AI that analyzes your pronunciation.

Spontaneity: “Take an Interview” gives you no time to think. Polish students often have a rich passive English vocabulary but lack the ability to produce speech immediately. Practice answering random questions aloud, set a timer for 45 seconds, and talk about “Your favorite subject and why.” Do this daily for 10 minutes.

Writing, new formats, but easier than an essay

Good news: you don’t have to write a 300-word essay. Bad news: you have three short tasks under time pressure. Build a Sentence requires excellent knowledge of English sentence structure; practice sentence transformations (e.g., changing passive voice to active, converting adjectives into subordinate clauses). Write an Email is a skill you can practice by writing 2–3 emails daily in English, even to yourself. Academic Discussion is the only task that survived from the old format; if you practiced the old TOEFL, you have an advantage here.

Registration and Dates

Registration for the new TOEFL 2026 takes place exclusively online, through your ETS account. Here’s how to do it step-by-step:

1. Go to ets.org/toefl and create an account (or log in to an existing one).
2. Select “Register for TOEFL iBT” and choose an exam date.
3. Choose a test center; in Poland, available in Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw, Poznan, and Gdansk.
4. Pay the exam fee ($200–245 depending on the country; in Poland, ~$220, which is approximately $225 USD).
5. You will receive a confirmation email with instructions for exam day.

The TOEFL exam is held several times a month, which is a significant advantage compared to the SAT, which is only available 7 times a year. You can choose almost any weekend. Registration should occur at least 2 weeks before the planned date, but popular dates (September, January, before application deadlines) fill up faster.

The TOEFL Home Edition option, taking the test from home, is still available in the new format. Requirements: stable internet connection, camera, microphone, a private room without other people. The score from the home version is treated identically to a test center score.

A detailed registration guide can be found in our guide: How to Register for TOEFL 2026.

More information about the language requirements of European universities can be found in our guide: TOEFL vs IELTS, which certificate for studies in Europe? and in the article on TOEFL scores needed for studies in Europe.

Summary, the New TOEFL is a New Start

The new TOEFL 2026 is the most radical change in the history of this exam. Shorter, more practical, adaptive, and AI-scored. If you prepared for the old format, forget what you knew and start fresh. If you’re just beginning, you have the advantage of not having to “unlearn” anything.

For Polish high school graduates, the new TOEFL is both an opportunity and a challenge. An opportunity, because the test is closer to everyday language use, is shorter, and delivers results faster. A challenge, because Speaking requires natural pronunciation and spontaneity, and Listening does not allow for notes. But with a proper preparation plan and regular practice, a band 5 (C1) is within reach of every determined student.

Next Steps

1. Take a diagnostic test on prepclass.io in the new TOEFL 2026 format to identify your strengths and weaknesses.
2. Check your university requirements: do you need a band 4 (B2) or 5 (C1)? Details in our guide to TOEFL scores in Europe.
3. Set a schedule: 3 months (B2+) or 6 months (B1) before your planned exam date.
4. Practice daily on prepclass.io – new task types with AI feedback, Listening simulations without notes, Speaking with pronunciation analysis.
5. Register for the exam: step-by-step registration guide.
6. Compare with IELTS: if you’re unsure which certificate to choose, read our TOEFL vs. IELTS article.
7. Prepare section by section: detailed strategies in dedicated guides: Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing.

The new TOEFL 2026 tests what you truly need for studying abroad: the ability to read emails from professors, listen to lectures without noting every word, answer questions without an hour of preparation, and write clear, concise texts. If you can actually do these things, the new format is your ally. It’s time to prepare.