In brief
- Teachers sitting the definitivat in 2027 register at their school by 9 October 2026, and the file reaches the inspectorate between 12 and 23 October. From the publication of the calendar to the registration deadline there are 30 days, against 42 last year.
- The written paper is sat on 6 July 2027, eight days earlier than in 2026. The initial results are posted on 13 July, the final ones on 21 July, and validation by ministerial order closes on 13 August 2027.
- The whole session has moved earlier, but the windows at the end have widened: the resolution of appeals grows from 3 to 5 working days, and the validation of results from 14 to 17.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) No. 766 of 9 September 2026
In force from: 9 September 2026, the date of publication
A teacher in their first year in the classroom has until 9 October 2026 to register for the definitivat, the examination that confers the right to teach. Order of the Minister of Education and Research No. 5.614/2026, published on 9 September 2026, approves the calendar of the 2027 session: twelve deadlines, from the submission of the file at the school to the order validating the results, in August 2027. It is the third examination schedule the ministry has published in seven days: on 3 September came the one for the examinations certifying vocational qualifications, on 7 September the 2027 baccalaureate calendar, and now the definitivat.
The definitivat is not a paperwork formality. The Framework Methodology approved by Order No. 5.434/2020, expressly invoked in the preamble to this order, builds it in two stages: an eliminatory one, with two subject inspections in the classroom and the assessment of the professional portfolio, and a final one, with a single written paper. To reach the written paper, the candidate needs an annual appraisal rating of „Good” or „Very good” for the current school year and an average of at least 8 across the inspections and the portfolio, but no less than 7 in each of them. The final mark is calculated using the formula ND = (NI1 + NI2 + NP + 7NS) / 10, where NS is the mark for the written paper, and the pass threshold is 8. In other words, the July paper carries a weight of 7 out of 10.
What is at stake is the right to practise itself. Article 10(1) of the methodology states that teachers who pass the examination acquire the right to practise in pre-university education. Article 241 of National Education Law No. 1/2011, the basis on which the examination continues to be organised, states the converse as well: anyone who does not pass it may be employed in the national pre-university education system only on a fixed-term basis, with the status of trainee teacher. At most two further sessions are allowed, each preceded by a fresh one-school-year practical placement, and all of it has to fit within five years of the start of the first placement.
The calendar in the annex reads as follows, in the order a candidate goes through it. Registration at the education unit, by 9 October 2026. Issuing of the decisions setting up the county committees, between 1 and 9 October. Transmission of the files to the inspectorate, checking, approval and notification of candidates, between 12 and 23 October. First subject inspection, by 12 February 2027. Second, by 28 May 2027. Completion of files and validation of the data in the application, between 2 and 14 June. Written paper, on 6 July. Initial results, on 13 July. Registration of appeals, on 13 and 14 July. Resolution of appeals, between 14 and 20 July. Final results, on 21 July. Transmission of the nominal lists to the ministry, on 21 and 22 July. Validation by order of the minister, between 22 July and 13 August 2027.
A faulty calendar is the one kind of act a reader copies without reading it a second time. No deadline in the annex falls on a Saturday or a Sunday: 9 October 2026 is a Friday, 12 February 2027 and 28 May 2027 are Fridays, the written paper of 6 July 2027 falls on a Tuesday, and the final results of 21 July 2027 are posted on a Wednesday. The intervals follow one another logically, with no window closing before the ones it precedes, and the position of every deadline matches page 15 of the Gazette.
A teacher sitting the definitivat teaches from school documents that have been rebuilt: MEC Order no. 4.617/2026 rewrites the methodology for framework curricula and school syllabuses.
What it changes in practice
The order applies from 9 September 2026, the date of publication. Article 4 says only that the act is published in the Official Gazette of Romania, without providing for a later date, and Article 12(3) of Law No. 24/2000 establishes that normative acts of central public administration bodies, other than laws and ordinances, enter into force on the date of publication unless they say otherwise. The three-day period after publication, the one in the Constitution, concerns laws and ordinances, not ministerial orders.
The first effect is one of scheduling: the candidate has 30 days from publication to the registration deadline. The file is submitted at one of the units where they are employed this school year and must contain, among other things, the registration form, the certificate of actual classroom seniority as qualified teaching staff and, for anyone beyond their first placement year, the appraisal rating certificate. Checking, legal approval and validation take place at the inspectorate, between 12 and 23 October. Article 14(4) of the methodology cuts the consequence of a rejected file short: candidates who are rejected do not have their subject inspections carried out, so the session closes there.
Then comes the scheduling of the inspections. The methodology requires them to be held during teaching periods, in accordance with the structure of the school year, the first in the first half of the year, the second during the teaching periods of the second half. Both deadlines chosen by the ministry meet the condition: 12 February 2027 is the last day of the third teaching interval under Order No. 3.194/2026, in the earliest variant of the mobile holiday, and 28 May 2027 falls within the interval from 5 May to 18 June 2027. There are 105 days between the two deadlines.
The effect the candidate feels most keenly comes in July. The written paper is sat after the end of lessons, begins at 9.00 a.m. and lasts four hours. From the paper to the initial results there are 7 days, exactly as last year. An appeal is lodged on 13 or 14 July, and the re-marking takes place between 14 and 20 July. Where the difference between the appeal mark and the initial one is no more than 1.5 points, the appeal mark stands as final; above that threshold a third assessment steps in, again within the same window.
The last effect is the financial one, and it arrives a school year late. Tenure is granted from 1 September of the school year following the one in which the examination was taken, and salary entitlements run from the same date. For the 2027 session that means 1 September 2027, while validation by ministerial order closes on 13 August 2027, 19 days earlier.
One reservation is worth reading from the outset. Through Article 2, the order allows the national examination committee to move, depending on the number of candidates registered for the 2027 session, four of the dates in the calendar: the posting of the initial results, the registration of appeals, their resolution and the posting of the final results. The date of the written paper is not on that list, so 6 July 2027 is the only fixed point the candidate can rely on.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
The previous session ran on Order of the Minister of Education and Research No. 5.731/2025, published in Official Gazette of Romania No. 807 of 29 August 2025. The structure is identical to that of the new calendar: the same twelve entries, in the same order, with the same wording. No activity has disappeared and none has been added. What has changed are the dates and the length of the windows.
The whole calendar has moved earlier. Registration closed on 10 October 2025, now on 9 October 2026. The written paper was on 14 July 2026, now it is on 6 July 2027, eight days earlier. The final results were posted on 27 July 2026, now on 21 July 2027, six days earlier. Validation closed on 18 August 2026, now on 13 August 2027, five days earlier.
The days gained at the start have been spent at the end. The resolution of appeals had 5 calendar days last year, between 22 and 26 July 2026, that is only 3 working days, because the window closed on a Sunday. It now has 7 calendar days, between 14 and 20 July 2027, that is 5 working days, two thirds more effective re-marking time. The validation of results grows from 20 to 23 calendar days, that is from 14 to 17 working days.
Three windows have tightened. The completion of files and validation of the data in the application falls from 14 to 13 calendar days, that is from 10 to 9 working days. The issuing of the decisions setting up the committees falls from 10 to 9 days. The transmission of the nominal lists to the ministry falls from 3 days to 2. Unchanged are the transmission of the files to the inspectorate, 12 calendar days and 10 working days in both years, and the registration of appeals, two days.
The inspections have moved closer together. The first had a deadline of 6 February 2026, now 12 February 2027, so it has gained a week. The second had a deadline of 29 May 2026, now 28 May 2027. The interval between them falls from 112 to 105 days, and from the second inspection to the written paper there are 39 days, against 46 last year.
Publication, by contrast, came later. Last year’s order appeared on 29 August 2025, 42 days before the registration deadline. This one appeared on 9 September 2026, 30 days before. The route inside the ministry has lengthened too: last year the explanatory memorandum bore the number 2.396/DGMCDRSIP and the date 21 August 2025, the order was signed six days later and published two days after that. This year, explanatory memorandum No. 3.245/DGMCDRSIP is dated 31 August 2026, the signature came on 2 September, and publication only on 9 September, a week after signing. The signatory has changed as well: Daniel-Ovidiu David last year, Mihai Dimian now.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- No deadline falls at a weekend. Last year, the window for resolving appeals closed on a Sunday, 26 July 2026, which meant 3 working days out of the 5 announced.
- Appeals get 5 working days of re-marking instead of 3, and where a third marking is needed, it too has to fit inside that window.
- The two inspection deadlines fall on teaching days in every county, whatever week of mobile holiday is chosen in February 2027.
- The session closes on 13 August 2027, 19 days before 1 September, the date from which tenure and salary entitlements are granted. Last year the margin was 14 days.
- The structure of the calendar has not changed at all since 2026, so a candidate sitting the examination for the second time recognises every step.
What remains a problem
- From publication to the registration deadline there are 30 days, against 42 last year, even though the structure of the school year had been known since 16 February 2026.
- The assessment of the portfolio has no entry of its own in the calendar, even though its mark counts both towards the eliminatory average and in the formula for the final mark. The only reference point is the window for completing files.
- The checking of files and the notification of candidates share the same window, 12 to 23 October 2026. A file approved on 23 October itself leaves no day at all for notification.
- The deadlines for the two inspections are written without a year, „by 12 February” and „by 28 May”. The year has to be inferred from the column heading, not from the text.
- The completion of files loses a working day, from 10 to 9, even though it is the last moment at which a registration error can be put right.
- Four of the dates are left to the national examination committee, through Article 2, with no deadline by which a change has to be announced.
Practical advice
- Submit the file at the school a few days before 9 October 2026, not on the 9th itself. The deadline concerns registration at the unit, and the school still has to take the file to the inspectorate in the window from 12 to 23 October, through persons delegated by its management.
- Check that the file contains the certificate showing actual classroom teaching seniority as qualified teaching staff at the date of registration. It is the document on which the one-school-year placement condition hangs, and a rejected file means the inspections are not carried out and the session is lost.
- Schedule the first inspection well before 12 February 2027. If the county inspectorate places the mobile holiday week at the start of the interval from 15 February to 7 March 2027, the last teaching days before the deadline are those of 8 to 12 February, and that is where everyone will be crowding in.
- Keep an eye on the eliminatory-stage average from February onwards: at least 8 as the average of the inspections and the portfolio, but no less than 7 in each of them. Subject inspection marks cannot be appealed and are valid only for the session you registered for.
- Do not count on the eliminatory stage to lift your final mark. In the formula ND = (NI1 + NI2 + NP + 7NS) / 10, the written paper carries a weight of 7 out of 10, and the pass threshold is 8.
- If you lodge an appeal on 13 or 14 July 2027, bear in mind that the re-marked result stands as final whenever the difference from the initial mark is no more than 1.5 points, either up or down. It can go down, not only up.
- Head teachers and inspectors for human resource development would do well to fix their own file-checking schedule in the first half of the October window. Notifying candidates also has to fit in by 23 October.
Frequently asked questions
By when do I register for the 2027 definitivat?
When is the written paper and how long does it last?
When do I find out the results?
How is the examination mark calculated?
What happens if I do not pass?
When does the order enter into force?
Can the dates in the calendar be moved?
When are the subject inspections held?
From what date does tenure obtained in 2027 count?
Is this the last session organised under the old rules?
Editorial analysis
What is interesting is the redistribution of time. The whole session has moved about a week earlier, and the days gained have not evaporated: the resolution of appeals goes from 3 to 5 working days, validation from 14 to 17. Last year, the re-marking window announced as 5 days closed on Sunday 26 July 2026, so the committees effectively had three days for every appealed paper in the country, including those cases where the difference exceeded 1.5 points and called for a third assessment. This year no deadline in the calendar falls at a weekend. It is the only substantive change in this order, but one that shows up in the quality of the marking, not only in the table.
The second observation requires placing the calendar next to the structure of the school year, not only next to last year’s calendar. The deadline for the first inspection, 12 February 2027, coincides exactly with the earliest of the three dates on which the third teaching interval may end under Order No. 3.194/2026: Friday 12 February, or 19 or 26 February 2027, at each inspectorate’s decision. The ministry has therefore chosen the earliest common denominator, which guarantees that 12 February is a teaching day in every county. The price is a practical inequality: in counties that place their mobile holiday week at the end of the interval from 15 February to 7 March, up to two weeks of lessons remain, in the second half of February, during which the first inspection can no longer be held even though the school is open. A deadline written as a rule rather than as a fixed date would have solved this in a single line.
From the same overlap comes an ambiguity that the order inherits rather than creates. The methodology requires the first inspection to be held „in the first half of the school year”, without saying how the half is counted. Counted in teaching weeks, the 36 weeks of the 2026-2027 year split down the middle around 5 February 2027, and the 12 February deadline overruns it by one teaching week. Counted by the calendar, the school year begins on 1 September 2026 and ends on 31 August 2027, so the midpoint falls on 1 March and the deadline is comfortably inside it. The second reading is the one supported by the text on the structure of the school year, so we do not treat the difference as a defect of the order. It nevertheless remains a place where two people of good faith can count differently, and the remedy lies in the methodology, not here.
The last observation concerns the horizon rather than the session. The order is issued on the basis of Article 248(6) of Law No. 198/2023, which keeps the examination on the rules of Law No. 1/2011 up to and including the 2027-2028 school year. The 2027 session is therefore the second to last under the old framework. For a candidate who fails the written paper on 6 July 2027, that means that of the two further attempts they are entitled to, only the first, in 2028, will certainly run on the rules they know; the second would fall in a year for which nothing published so far says how the examination is organised and what happens to the five years within which the whole path has to fit. It is not a problem of this order, but it is exactly the kind of question asked by someone planning a career in October 2026.
What should be changed
- Publishing the calendar by 1 July. The structure of the 2026-2027 school year had been known since 16 February 2026, 205 days before this order, and the methodology had not changed. Effect: inspections and the file are planned over the summer, not within the 30 days between publication and the registration deadline.
- An entry of its own for the assessment of the portfolio. The portfolio mark counts both towards the condition for reaching the written paper and in the formula for the final mark, yet it has no date in the calendar. Effect: it becomes clear by when the portfolio must be handed in and when the mark arrives, without inferring it from the file-completion window.
- Separating the checking of files from the notification of candidates. The two currently share the same interval, 12 to 23 October 2026. Effect: anyone whose file is rejected on the last day still has some room to seek clarification, instead of finding out after the window has closed.
- Writing the year against every deadline in the annex. „By 12 February” and „by 28 May” appear without a year, in a table spanning two calendar years. Effect: the line can be quoted and clipped on its own, without the column heading, which is how it usually ends up on school websites.
- Tying the deadline for the first inspection to the structure of the school year rather than to a fixed date. A formula such as „by the last teaching day of the third interval” would follow each inspectorate’s decision. Effect: counties that choose the mobile holiday later no longer lose two usable weeks of lessons.
- A deadline for the changes the national committee may make. Article 2 gives it the right to move four dates but does not say by when. Effect: anyone taking leave for the appeal days finds out in good time whether anything has changed.
Original text of the legal act
The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.
The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania
Official Gazette of Romania no. 766 of 9 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 115 KB the act starts on page 15
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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, consult a licensed attorney or tax advisor.