CAO points 2026
They do not exist yet. The 2026 figures are published after the Leaving Certificate results in August, and this page carries them the day they land.
Why there is nothing here yet
A course’s points are not a price set in advance. They are wherever the queue was cut once every applicant’s total is known, so the 2026 figure for any course depends on who applies this year and what they score. Nobody has that until the offers are made.
That is why this page is empty rather than filled with estimates, and why any site showing you a 2026 figure today is showing you a guess with a year on it.
When the 2026 points arrive
Round One offers issue within days of the Leaving Certificate results in August, and those are the figures most people mean by “the points”. Later rounds run through September as places move, and their figures are usually lower, because they are what was left over. Every deadline in the cycle, with the exact time it falls at, is on CAO key dates, and cao.ie is where they are published first.
What the last five years actually did
This is the only honest guide to 2026anybody has. Every row is counted from the CAO’s published charts, over the courses that carried a figure on the points scale in both years. Courses scored partly on a portfolio, an audition or a test are left out, because their figure is on a different scale.
| Year on year | Courses compared | Rose | Fell | Held | Median move |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 to 2025 | 1,240 | 635 | 511 | 94 | +1 |
| 2023 to 2024 | 1,226 | 530 | 590 | 106 | 0 |
| 2022 to 2023 | 749 | 226 | 474 | 49 | -10 |
| 2021 to 2022 | 1,121 | 515 | 532 | 74 | 0 |
| 2020 to 2021 | 1,237 | 888 | 289 | 60 | +15 |
The pattern is that there is no single pattern. In the most recent year, 2024 to 2025, 635 courses rose and 511 fell out of 1,240 compared, and the middle course moved by 1 point. The median figure across all of them was 327.
Individual courses move much further than that. The largest single fall in the years held here is 240 points and the largest rise is 269. That is the range a plan has to survive, which is why a course’s own five year record is worth more than last August’s figure on its own.
What to do until the figures land
Work out where you stand against what courses have actually taken. The points calculator gives you a total with the maths bonus applied in the right place, and tells you how many courses that number reached in 2025.
Then narrow it down. The Course Matcher filters by subject area, level and county and shows where your total sits against each course’s own recent range, rather than against one year’s figure.
The full 2025 archive is at CAO points 2025, and will CAO points drop goes through what actually moves them.
Questions people ask
- When will the 2026 CAO points be published?
- After the Leaving Certificate results issue in August. Round One offers follow within days of the results and carry the first points figures of the year. Later rounds continue through September and those figures are usually lower, because they are what was left after Round One.
- Can anyone tell me what the 2026 points will be?
- No. A course's points are not set in advance by anybody. They are wherever the queue was cut once every applicant's total is known, so the figure depends on who applied this year and what they scored, which nobody knows until the offers are made. Any site giving you a 2026 figure now is guessing.
- Will CAO points go up or down in 2026?
- Both, on different courses. In the last five years the split has never been one sided: in the most recent year 635 courses rose and 511 fell out of 1,240 compared. The median course moved by a single point. Treating the whole system as rising or falling is the mistake that costs people places.
- Can I use the 2025 points to plan?
- Yes, and it is the best thing available, as long as you read them as a record rather than a target. Use the range a course has moved through over several years instead of last August's figure on its own, because a single year is a data point and several are a shape.
- Where do these figures come from?
- The CAO's own published points charts, one workbook per year, read directly rather than copied from anywhere else. Nothing on this site is estimated, averaged into existence or predicted, and where a figure was never published the page says so instead of filling the gap.