Medical and specialty training in the United Kingdom statistics & facts

Medical training in the UK at a glance

Becoming a doctor in the UK takes at least ten years, from medical school through the two-year foundation programme to specialty training. Every stage of that pipeline is now under pressure. Medicine attracted 25,770 UK university applicants for 2026 entry, up 10.4 percent. The UK Foundation Programme received 11,752 applications for 2026 and placed 98 percent of eligible applicants. But the real bottleneck comes next: in 2025 there were about 80,000 applications for specialty training in the first round, and NHS England reported that applicant numbers had risen from 12,000 in 2019 to nearly 40,000. In 2026 a new law gave UK graduates priority for training posts, transforming who gets them. This report sets out the numbers at every stage. For the workforce as a whole, see our overview of doctors in the United Kingdom.

The UK medical training pathway has four main stages. Students spend five or six years at medical school. Graduates then complete the two-year UK Foundation Programme as foundation year 1 (FY1) and year 2 (FY2) doctors. After that, doctors apply for specialty training, either entering core training followed by higher training, or a run-through programme. Training to become a GP takes at least three years after foundation, and training to become a consultant typically takes between five and eight years. Doctors who qualified abroad can join at the specialty training stage if they have a licence to practise.

Medical school places and applicants

The number of funded medical school places in England was increased to 7,500 a year in 2020 with the opening of five new medical schools. The government added 205 places for 2024/25 and 350 for 2025/26, and the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan set a goal of 15,000 places by 2031. In practice, first-year medicine entrants in England numbered 8,405 in 2020 and 8,485 in 2021, before falling to 7,625 in 2022 and rising to 7,820 in 2023 and a provisional 8,045 in 2024. Entrant numbers can exceed funded places because of international students and other places funded outside the cap.

Around 8,000 a year: Medical school intake in England has hovered around 8,000 since 2020.

Demand for medicine remains very high. According to UCAS, 24,150 people applied to study medicine by the October deadline for 2024 entry and 23,350 for 2025 entry, a fall of 3.3 percent. Applications then rebounded to a record 25,770 for 2026 entry, up 10.4 percent. Medicine remains one of the most competitive degree subjects. Medical students are not registered with the General Medical Council until they graduate, but universities run their own student fitness to practise procedures for concerns about conduct or health, explained in this guide to student fitness to practise↗. Once registered, doctors fall under the GMC process described in our report on GMC fitness to practise statistics.

Record demand: 25,770 people applied for medicine for 2026 entry.

The UK Foundation Programme

Every UK medical graduate who wants to practise must complete the foundation programme. For 2025 the UK Foundation Programme Office received 11,205 applications, of which 10,634 were eligible, and all eligible applicants were allocated a place. For 2026 applications rose to 11,752. Under the new prioritisation rules, 10,810 applicants in the priority groups, mainly UK graduates, were allocated in the main round, 82.3 percent to their first-choice area, while 738 applicants outside the priority groups were placed on a reserve list. After five reserve rounds, 11,286 eligible applicants, 98 percent, had been allocated a programme and 188 had not.

Almost everyone placed: 98 percent of eligible applicants received a foundation post for 2026.

The foundation programme has grown with medical school output. In England, the number of foundation trainees across both years rose from 12,243 in 2020 to 14,104 in 2024. Over the same period, the number of first-level specialty training posts in England fell slightly, from 8,081 to 7,929. This mismatch between foundation output and specialty posts is at the heart of the training bottleneck.

The bottleneck: Foundation trainees grew by 15 percent, while first-level specialty posts fell by 2 percent.

Competition for specialty training

Competition for specialty training has intensified dramatically. NHS England data show that the number of applicants rose from about 12,000 in 2019 to nearly 40,000 by 2025, driven by growing numbers of UK graduates, international medical graduates and doctors who had been working in non-training posts. In the first round of 2025 there were about 80,000 applications, of which 28,000 were judged appointable, and more than 2,000 appointable UK graduates received no offer.

Competition ratios vary enormously between specialties. In the first round of 2025, core psychiatry training attracted 21.83 applications per post and ophthalmology 21.54. Anaesthetics core training had 12.56 applications per post, emergency medicine 14.23 and obstetrics and gynaecology 16.65. The largest programmes were less competitive: GP training had 4.91 applications per post and internal medicine training 5.27. Some small programmes were extremely competitive, with cardiothoracic surgery at 73.7 applications per post and community sexual and reproductive health at 98.5.

From 5 to 74 applications per post: Cardiothoracic surgery and public health were the most contested programmes.

Ratios rose almost everywhere between 2024 and 2025. Core psychiatry went from 9.45 applications per post to 21.83, anaesthetics from 6.50 to 12.56 and core surgical training from 5.25 to 8.57. GP training rose from 3.67 to 4.91 and internal medicine from 3.69 to 5.27. Because one applicant can apply to several programmes, applications per post overstate the number of competitors per post, but the trend is clear.

Psychiatry more than doubled: Core psychiatry competition rose from 9.5 to 21.8 applications per post.

The 2026 Medical Training Prioritisation Act

In response to the bottleneck, Parliament passed the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act, which gives UK medical graduates and certain other groups, including doctors with significant NHS experience, priority for foundation and specialty training posts. The effect in 2026 was immediate. According to NHS England, there were 37,689 appointable applications for 9,520 specialty training posts, about four per post, but only 19,706 from prioritised candidates, about two per post. Prioritised candidates filled 98 percent of posts, compared with 72 percent in 2025, and the share of accepted offers going to non-prioritised applicants fell from 27.95 percent to 1.75 percent. Accepted offers to non-prioritised applicants dropped from 2,168 to 163.

A dramatic shift: Non-prioritised applicants received 1.75 percent of accepted offers in 2026, down from 27.95 percent.

The change mainly affects international medical graduates who have not yet worked in the NHS. In 2024, 22,027 of the 79,171 doctors in training in the UK had qualified abroad, according to the GMC. Supporters of prioritisation argue that it ensures the UK benefits from the doctors it trains; critics warn that it could deter international doctors on whom many services depend. Our report on international doctors in the UK looks at this dependence, and our report on doctors leaving the UK at why some UK graduates still choose to go abroad.

Doctors in training

In 2024 there were 79,171 licensed doctors in training in the UK, of whom 57,144 had qualified in the UK and 22,027 abroad. Women made up 58 percent of doctors in training, part of a wider shift covered in our report on UK doctors by gender, age and ethnicity. Trainees face heavy workloads and high burnout risk: in the GMC National Training Survey 2026, 19 percent of trainees were at high risk of burnout and 61 percent at high or moderate risk, with the highest levels in emergency medicine. These pressures, and the competition for posts, are covered in our report on burnout among UK doctors. Pay for each training grade is set out in our report on UK doctor pay.

Outlook

The training pipeline is being reshaped from both ends. More medical school places are planned, which will increase the number of UK graduates seeking foundation and specialty posts from the late 2020s, while prioritisation narrows the route for international graduates. Unless the number of specialty training posts grows, competition for UK graduates will rise again. The number of training places, GP posts and consultant jobs will determine whether the expansion translates into a larger qualified workforce. Our report on the GP workforce shows the same pressure in general practice.

UK medical training in numbers

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