The 2027 Bar Examinations are set by the Supreme Court's Bar Bulletin No. 1-2027, announced on 16 September 2026. Everything below is taken from that announcement; where you need the text itself, the Court publishes it on its own microsite, sc.judiciary.gov.ph/bar-2027, and that is the copy that controls.
The schedule
| Day | Date | Morning sitting | Afternoon sitting |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sunday, 5 September 2027 | Political and Public International Law — 15% | Commercial and Taxation Laws — 20% |
| 2 | Wednesday, 8 September 2027 | Civil Law and Land Titles and Deeds — 20% | Labor Law and Social Legislation — 10% |
| 3 | Sunday, 12 September 2027 | Criminal Law — 10% | Remedial Law and Legal and Judicial Ethics, with Practical Exercises — 25% |
Six subjects over three days, two a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The gaps between sittings — 5 to 8 September, then 8 to 12 September — are part of the design: they are revision days, not rest days, and a candidate who treats them as rest days arrives at Day 3 having lost the two subjects examined on Day 1.
The format
Twenty essay problems per subject. A problem consisting of a single question carries 5% of the subject; where a problem consists of two questions, their combined weight is 5%. The examination is administered on a secure electronic assessment platform, as it has been since 2020.
Three things follow from the 5% arithmetic, and they are the most practically important facts in this article.
Every problem is worth the same. There is no long question to be rescued with brilliance and no short one to be skipped. The candidate who answers twenty adequately beats the candidate who answers six perfectly.
A two-question problem is one problem's marks. The sub-questions are not extra credit; they are the same 5% split in two. Answering one of the two is answering half a problem.
Twelve minutes a problem. Four hours divided by twenty, per sitting. The pace is not a suggestion; it is the shape of the whole paper, and it is what timed practice exists to build.
The weights, and what they mean
A weighted general average of 75% is required to pass, and the weights are not equal:
- Remedial Law and Legal and Judicial Ethics — 25%. One afternoon, a quarter of the result.
- Civil Law and Land Titles and Deeds — 20%.
- Commercial and Taxation Laws — 20%.
- Political and Public International Law — 15%.
- Labor Law and Social Legislation — 10%.
- Criminal Law — 10%.
The arithmetic is blunt: the last afternoon is worth two and a half times either of the ten per cent sittings. A candidate who is strong in Criminal Law and Labor Law and weak in Remedial Law has spent the year strengthening the smaller half of their own result.
That does not mean equal hours everywhere in proportion to weight — your existing strengths matter — but it does mean that no plan can justify neglecting Remedial Law, and that the two ten per cent subjects cannot carry a weak quarter.
The cut-off: 30 June 2026
The examination covers laws, rules and issuances in force, and jurisprudence promulgated, as of 30 June 2026. Nothing after that date is examinable.
Two further rules from the same paragraph of the Bulletin deserve equal weight:
- Only the doctrines and dispositions set out in the main opinion are examinable. Separate concurrences and dissents are not — which settles a question candidates spend real hours on. Read them if they help you understand the ruling; do not memorise them.
- Computations, if required, involve only basic arithmetic, and in Criminal Law the examinee is not required to compute the specific periods of penalties expressed in years, months or days. Learn what determines the penalty; you will not be asked to do the arithmetic of the period.
Taken together, this is the most useful passage in the Bulletin, because it converts an open-ended subject into a closed one. It means:
- You are not chasing new cases. From July 2026 onward, a new decision cannot be asked. Reading about it is curiosity, not review.
- Your materials must match the cut-off. A reviewer published after June 2026 may cover developments beyond it; an older reviewer may predate a provision that was already amended. What matters is whether the text you are using states the law in force on 30 June 2026.
- Amendments before the cut-off still matter. A provision amended in, say, 2024 is examinable in its amended form, and a decision interpreting the old text is a trap.
The habit this should build: every time you learn a doctrine, note the date of the authority behind it. An authority dated after 30 June 2026 is outside the examination; an authority before it may still have been overtaken by an amendment within the period.
The syllabus
The Bulletin carries the coverage for each subject, and the examination is set within it. Two practical uses:
- It is the boundary of what may be asked. A topic outside the syllabus is not review; it is reading. That is not a licence to ignore context, but it is a licence to stop.
- It is the checklist for coverage. The coverage is finite and published. Rallying "I have covered Civil Law" against a finite list is a different, and much more honest, exercise than against a textbook.
Our 2027 coverage map sets the syllabus topic by topic against the lectures that teach each one, so you can see what is examinable and where the material for it is — and if a topic has no lecture, that is visible too.
What the 2027 format rewards
The examination has been electronic since 2020 and has been essay-based in this format for several cycles. The candidate it rewards is not the one who has read the most, but the one who can:
- produce a structured answer in twelve minutes, with the conclusion first, the rule stated, and the facts applied — the shape described in how a bar answer is scored;
- hold eight subjects of doctrine at once, in outline, which is a scheduling problem before it is a reading problem — see the twelve-month plan;
- keep going for four hours, twice in a day, three times in a week, which is an endurance and sleep problem as much as a study one;
- read a decision quickly and extract the ratio, which is the skill the essay questions assume and which nobody tests directly — see how to read a decision.
What to do with this article
Read the Bulletin itself, once, at the start of your review year. Not a summary of it — the text. It is short, it is the governing document, and it is the only place where the schedule, the weights, the cut-off and the syllabus are stated together.
Then put the three dates where you will see them: 5, 8 and 12 September 2027. Everything you decide about the next eleven months follows from those three days, and knowing what each day asks is worth more than another outline.
For the practical consequences — how to divide the year, what to protect in the last ninety days — start with the review plan.