PLAB for IMGs: the complete 2026 guide

One thing before anything else: everything below is accurate to July 2026 and checked against primary sources, but fees and rules move. Treat the GMC’s own PLAB guides on gmc-uk.org and your GMC Online account as the final word, always.

What PLAB is — and the standard it holds you to

PLAB has two parts. PLAB 1 is an Applied Knowledge Test: a written paper of clinical scenarios. PLAB 2 is a Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment: an OSCE, sat in person in Manchester. Both are pitched at the level of a doctor entering the second year of the UK Foundation Programme — F2. That benchmark is worth internalising early, because it tells you what the exam is really asking. Not how much medicine you know — whether you would make safe, sensible F2-level decisions about common, important and acute presentations, and about long-term conditions as they present in primary care, managed the way current UK best practice manages them rather than the way your local system does.

Since 2024, PLAB has been MLA-compliant: its questions map to the MLA content map, the same framework UK medical students are assessed against. The exam “will still be called PLAB for a while longer”, in the GMC’s own words. If you have heard that PLAB is being scrapped or replaced, it is not — our PLAB vs UKMLA explainer untangles the rumour properly. The short version: there is nothing to wait for.

Before you can book anything

PLAB 1 booking happens through “My Tests” in your own GMC Online account — yours, set up by you, not an agency’s. And the booking service will not even open to you until the GMC has verified your English language evidence. In practice that means English comes first, always:

• IELTS Academic (including UKVI and Online versions): overall 7.5 or above and 7.0 or above in each of the four skills, in the same sitting, on your most recent attempt. Valid for 2 years. A One Skill Retake is accepted within 60 days if the original test was computer-based.
• OET (Medicine): grade B in all four skills, same sitting, most recent attempt; paper, computer and OET@Home are all accepted. Also valid for 2 years.
• Other routes exist — a primary medical qualification taught in English, for instance — but strict conditions apply, and the GMC itself advises PLAB candidates to “strongly consider taking IELTS or OET”. Check the GMC’s English language pages before relying on anything else. Note that the employer-reference and UK-job-offer English routes are not available to PLAB applicants.

Your primary medical qualification matters too. There is no published list of acceptable qualifications — the GMC assesses case by case, and your medical school should appear in the World Directory of Medical Schools. Internship requirements bite later, at registration: broadly, at least 12 months’ continuous practice in an approved training post (honorary posts do not count), including three months each of medicine and surgery — or an alternative based on two years’ continuous supervised practice in a public hospital after graduation. The eligibility checklist walks through all of it before you spend a penny.

PLAB 1: the written paper

PLAB 1 is 180 single-best-answer questions — a clinical scenario, a question, and five options with one right answer — over 3 hours, on paper. Not on a computer, whatever the forums tell you. It runs four times a year, in February, May, August and November, and you can sit it a long way from Britain: alongside Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, London and Manchester, there are overseas centres in 16 countries, including six cities in India, two in Pakistan and two each in Nigeria and Egypt. Most candidates never travel to the UK for part one. For exact dates, look in GMC Online rather than trusting anything second-hand.

The pass mark is set fresh for each sitting using the Angoff method plus one standard error of measurement — in plain words, a panel judges how a just-safe F2-level doctor would score on that specific paper, with a small statistical margin added on top. Your result — published by 4pm on a stated date, around six weeks after the exam — comes with your score, that sitting’s pass mark, the cohort average, and feedback across ten clinical practice areas from the MLA content map (the GMC’s labels include ‘neurosciences and senses (including skins)’ and ‘endocrine, metabolic and clinical haematology’). Refugee doctors get their first two PLAB 1 attempts free. The full detail, including how to prepare, is in PLAB 1 explained.

PLAB 2: the OSCE in Manchester

PLAB 2 is 16 scenario stations of 8 minutes each, with 90 seconds between stations to move and read instructions and at least two rest stations built in. Most stations use simulated patients — trained actors — and some use manikins or equipment; practical skills that may appear include venepuncture, cannulation, CPR, suturing, ECG interpretation and urinary catheterisation. Every station is observed by an examiner, and you are marked across three domains: data gathering, technical and assessment skills; clinical management; and interpersonal skills.

It is sat only in Manchester, at one of two GMC Clinical Assessment Centres whose addresses are almost comically similar — 3 Hardman Square and 3 Hardman Street — so check your booking confirmation with real care; the GMC itself warns about this. Exams run throughout the year, with dates visible in GMC Online once you hold a PLAB 1 pass, and a priority-access route (via plab@gmc-uk.org) for candidates with a UK job offer in the NHS that requires registration, or with UK refugee status. To pass you must both reach the overall pass mark and pass a minimum number of stations — and no, the minimum is not “10 of 16”; the GMC does not publish the number in your results (it says candidates can ask), and anyone quoting one is guessing.

On getting there: a Standard Visitor visa covers sitting PLAB 2 in the UK — you will need a GMC letter confirming your test registration. The visa rules are unexpectedly generous at both ends: if you fail, you may extend for up to a further six months to retake, and if you pass, you can apply to stay for up to 18 months in total for an unpaid clinical attachment. PLAB 2 explained covers the stations, the visa rules and the Manchester logistics in full.

The clocks, and a myth to clear early

You must pass PLAB 2 within two years of passing PLAB 1 — and the clock runs from the date you sat PLAB 1, not the date your result arrived. You may have read that you get three years; you do not. That was a COVID-era arrangement that has ended (the GMC’s pages now give two years), and planning around it is one of the most expensive mistakes still circulating. A second clock starts when you pass PLAB 2: your registration application should be approved within two years of that pass, after which extra evidence of knowledge and skills is needed. Layer on the two-year validity of your English evidence and the sequencing genuinely matters — attempts, resits and the two-year clocks maps how the deadlines interact.

The order to do things

After PLAB: registration and the first job

With both parts passed, you apply for full registration with a licence to practise: your EPIC-verified qualification, English evidence, certificates of good standing from every regulator you have held registration with, internship evidence, a list of your activities for the last five years, fitness-to-practise declarations, and a digital identity check through the Digidentity app. The GMC aims to make an initial assessment within five working days of a complete application, though overseas checks can add time. One useful quirk: a recent PLAB 2 pass extends the life of your English evidence at registration — an IELTS or OET up to three years old still counts, provided you passed PLAB 2 less than three months before applying.

Then comes the first job hunt — commonly advertised as trust grade, clinical fellow, junior clinical fellow or FY2-level standalone posts — on a Health and Care Worker visa: a certificate of sponsorship from an approved health or care employer, fees of £324 for up to three years or £628 beyond, exemption from the immigration health surcharge, and dependants allowed. After PLAB 2 takes the story from here.

And one forward pointer, because the road does not end at registration: PLAB gets you registered; for most training applications, the MSRA is the next gate. When you are ready to look that far ahead, the complete MSRA guide for IMGs is where to start.

From the team

PLAB rewards the organised more than the brilliant. The doctors who sail through are rarely the ones who knew the most medicine — they are the ones who did things in the right order: English verified early, EPIC running in the background, the two-year clocks respected, and a budget that survives one bad day. Get the sequence right and the exam itself is a fair test of things you already largely know.

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