MBBS in Italy and the IMAT: Seats, Fees and Scoring Rules

MBBS in Italy is studied as a six year Medicine and Surgery degree at public universities, and entry is through the IMAT, a 100 minute national entrance test. For the 2026/27 year the Ministry opened 1,362 English-taught medicine seats to candidates who are not EU citizens and live outside Italy.

MBBS in Italy: key takeaways

• The IMAT is now the only route into Italian medicine in English. Since 2025/26 the Italian-language medicine courses use a different system called the semestre filtro, so the IMAT applies to English-taught courses alone.

• There were 1,362 seats for non-EU candidates living abroad in 2026/27, spread across 27 English-taught Medicine and Surgery courses, against 2,430 seats for EU candidates and anyone resident in Italy.

• Wrong answers cost you marks. A correct answer is worth 1.5 points, a wrong one takes away 0.4, and a blank is worth zero. Guessing badly can pull you below the people who left questions alone.

• You can sit the test in India. India is on the Ministry's list of countries where the IMAT is held, so you do not have to fly to Italy to take it.

• Public tuition is tied to family income, not to nationality. At the University of Bologna the fixed part of the fee is EUR 157.04 a year, and the variable part falls away entirely for families below the published income threshold.

• Returning to India has one condition families miss. NMC rules ask for a 12 month internship inside the same foreign institution that awarded the degree, so the structure of your Italian course matters as much as its length.

MBBS in Italy at a glance

Every figure above comes from Ministerial Decree 1005 of 6 August 2026, the decree that sets the IMAT rules and seat numbers for the 2026/27 academic year.

What is the IMAT, and who has to sit it for MBBS in Italy?

The IMAT is the national entrance test for English-taught Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine degrees at Italian universities, and it is the only door into MBBS in Italy for an Indian student. There is no separate university-by-university exam and no interview.

From the 2025/26 year, the Italian-language medicine courses stopped using an entrance test and moved to the semestre filtro, an open first semester with qualifying exams, set out in Ministerial Decree 941 of 10 July 2026. The IMAT survived only for the English-taught courses. If you read older guidance that treats the IMAT as the gateway to all Italian medicine, it is out of date.

How many MBBS in Italy seats are open to Indian students?

Italy publishes its seat numbers in two columns, and the one that matters to a family in India is the second. For 2026/27 the Ministry set 1,362 Medicine and Surgery seats for candidates from non-EU countries who live outside Italy, alongside 2,430 for EU candidates and anyone already resident in Italy. That is 3,792 English-taught medicine seats in total across 27 course sites.

Source: Table B of Decree 1005, the official seat table for 2026/27.

Read the second column carefully. The split is not even: a course that looks large overall can be almost closed to you, and a smaller course can be the more realistic target.

When is the IMAT for MBBS in Italy, and when do you register?

For the 2026/27 cycle the test was held on 29 September 2026, and registration ran from 26 August to 15:00 on 9 September 2026. Italy has kept to a late-September test with a short registration window in late August for several years, so expect the next decree in the summer.

The closing time is absolute. The decree uses the word inderogabilmente, meaning the deadline cannot be extended for any reason. Registration is done on the Universitaly portal, and the Ministry publishes the exact buildings and rooms in a later notice.

What is on the IMAT paper for MBBS in Italy?

The paper is 60 multiple choice questions with five options each, and only one option is correct. The subject split is fixed by the decree, and biology carries the most weight.

A NEET aspirant already carries most of this. Biology, chemistry and physics together are 51 of the 60 questions, and the syllabus the Ministry publishes in Annex A sits close to Class 11 and Class 12 science. The nine questions you will not have practised are the logical reasoning and reading section, and they are worth 13.5 points out of 90, so they are worth a few weeks of attention rather than a separate course.

How is the IMAT scored, and what is the trap?

The maximum score is 90 points. A correct answer earns 1.5 points, a wrong answer takes away 0.4 points, and a question left blank scores zero. Candidates must finish above zero to enter the ranking at all, and the decree states that non-EU candidates living abroad who answer nothing are left out of the ranking entirely.

Here is the part that catches students trained on NEET. A wrong answer costs 0.4 against a gain of 1.5, but the paper is only 60 questions long and the seats for candidates abroad are few, so each blind guess is a larger share of your total. If you can rule out two of the five options, answering is usually worth it. If you cannot rule out any, leaving it blank protects the marks you have already earned.

Two separate national rankings are drawn up, one for Medicine and Dentistry together and one for Veterinary Medicine, and CINECA calculates every score centrally.

Where can you sit the IMAT for MBBS in Italy in India?

India is one of the countries on the Ministry's official list of IMAT venues, published as Table A of the decree. Candidates in the Gulf can sit it in Dubai. The full list for 2026/27 also included Albania, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Canada, China, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, Kenya, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States, alongside sixteen Italian university centres.

That removes a real cost. A student sitting an entrance test abroad usually pays for flights, a visa and several nights of accommodation before knowing whether they have a seat. Taking the IMAT in India means the only travel you pay for is travel you take after an offer.

How to apply for MBBS in Italy, step by step

The application for MBBS in Italy runs on one government portal, Universitaly, and the order of the steps is fixed. Miss one and the later ones close to you.

1. Create a Universitaly account before registration opens. The account is free and takes minutes, and doing it in advance means the short registration window is not spent on form filling.

2. Register for the IMAT inside the published window. For 2026/27 that was 26 August to 15:00 on 9 September 2026, and the decree states the closing time cannot be extended.

3. Choose your course preferences at registration. You indicate the universities you want while registering, so decide the order before you log in rather than during the session.

4. Pay the test fee and download the admission notice. Payment confirms the booking, and the Ministry publishes the exact buildings and rooms in a later notice.

5. Sit the IMAT at your chosen centre. The test runs for 100 minutes and starts at 13:30 Italian time, adjusted to the local time zone where you sit it.

6. Wait for the national ranking. CINECA scores every paper centrally and publishes two rankings, one for Medicine and Dentistry and one for Veterinary Medicine.

7. Accept the seat and enrol at the university. Enrolment is done with the university that offers you the place, and this is the point where fee exemption documents are submitted.

8. Apply for the study visa at the Italian mission in India. Pre-enrolment on Universitaly is what the mission checks, so the portal record and the university offer must match.

Every Italian medical school that appears in this process is listed in the World Directory of Medical Schools, the directory the National Medical Commission and ECFMG use to confirm that a foreign medical school exists and is recognised in its own country. Checking a school there before you fill a preference takes a minute and settles the question for good.

What does MBBS in Italy cost at a public university?

The cost of MBBS in Italy is not a single published figure, because Italian public universities do not charge a flat international fee. They charge a small fixed amount plus a variable amount calculated from the family's financial position, and the variable part can fall to nothing.

The University of Bologna fees and exemptions page shows how this works in practice for the 2026/27 year:

• A fixed instalment of EUR 157.04 a year. This is always due, whatever your income, and it is the floor of what you can pay.

• A variable instalment set by the family's financial indicator. Families below the published threshold of EUR 27,000 are fully exempt from it and pay only the fixed amount.

• A reduced flat fee for students from non-OECD countries. India is not an OECD member, so an Indian family whose income and assets sit entirely outside Italy can apply for this reduced rate instead of the full amount.

• Regional support on top of the fee waiver. The Emilia-Romagna region, where Bologna sits, runs scholarships, university residences and catering contributions through its right-to-study scheme, which students apply to separately from the university.

The paperwork, not the passport, decides the bill for MBBS in Italy. The exemption must be claimed with documentation of the family's income and assets by the published deadline. Bologna states plainly that a student who does not submit the documents pays the full amount.

For how an Italian figure sits against the rest of the continent, our breakdown of the full six year cost of MBBS in Europe sets tuition against living costs country by country, and the India versus abroad fee comparison puts both against a private seat at home.

Who cannot apply for MBBS in Italy through the IMAT?

Four groups are turned away, and it is better to know before you pay the registration fee:

• Students who have not finished Class 12. The qualification must be complete and recognised as giving access to university in Italy, so a student still awaiting results cannot enrol even if they clear the test.

• Students aiming at an Italian-language course. Those courses now run through the semestre filtro and do not take IMAT candidates at all.

• Candidates who answer nothing. A non-EU candidate living abroad who leaves the entire paper blank is excluded from the ranking under the decree, even though a blank scores zero rather than a negative.

• Candidates who miss the closing time. The 15:00 cut-off on the closing day is not extended, and there is no late window.

How does an Italian medical degree sit for coming back to India?

This is the question that decides whether MBBS in Italy is worth taking, and it deserves a straight answer rather than reassurance.

The rules are the Foreign Medical Graduate Licentiate Regulations, 2021, issued by the National Medical Commission. To be registered in India, a graduate of a foreign medical school must show all of the following:

• A course of at least 54 months. The Italian Medicine and Surgery degree runs six years, so the length itself is comfortably above the floor.

• An internship of at least 12 months in the same foreign institution. The internship has to sit in the institution that awarded the degree, not in a hospital arranged elsewhere afterwards.

• English as the medium of instruction. The English-taught Italian courses meet this directly, which is the whole reason they matter to Indian families.

• The subjects listed in Schedule I of the regulations. These cover the clinical subjects an MBBS graduate in India would have studied.

• Registration with the licensing body of that country. The graduate must hold the same right to practise there that a citizen of that country would hold with the same degree.

• A further 12 month supervised internship in India, applied for through the Commission after returning.

• A pass in the screening test. Until the National Exit Test is brought into force, this remains the FMGE, the exam a foreign medical graduate sits before they can work in India.

The condition to check before you accept a seat is the second one. Ask the university, in writing, how the clinical training in the final year is organised and whether it is awarded by the same institution that awards the degree. Do not accept a verbal answer from an admissions desk and do not rely on what another student says their friend was told. Our guide to medical registration in India after an MBBS in Europe sets out the paperwork in order, and the FMG internship and registration guide explains the Indian internship that follows. Where the exam itself is concerned, our note on what the NMC rules currently say about FMGE and NExT is kept current.

How does MBBS in Italy compare with the rest of Europe?

Italy is unusual among European destinations in three ways, and each cuts both directions.

If Italy does not work out, the wider MBBS in Europe country guide covers the routes that admit on school marks and interviews rather than a single national test, and our explainer on ECTS credits in European medical degrees helps you read any European course structure against what the NMC asks for.

Conclusion

MBBS in Italy offers something few European countries do: a six year medical degree taught in English at a public university, with tuition set by what a family earns rather than where it comes from, and an entrance test you can sit without leaving India. The cost of that is a single test day, a short registration window, and roughly 1,362 seats shared by candidates from across the world. Prepare biology hardest, treat guessing with care, file the income paperwork early, and confirm the internship structure in writing before you accept.

Sources

• Ministero dell'Universita e della Ricerca, official IMAT area for English-language Medicine and Dentistry

• Ministerial Decree 1005 of 6 August 2026, IMAT rules, content and available seats for 2026/27

• Decree 1005, Table B, seats by university and course for 2026/27

• Decree 1005, Table A, countries and venues where the IMAT is held

• Ministerial Decree 941 of 10 July 2026, the semestre filtro for Italian-language courses

• Universitaly, the Ministry's portal page for medicine admissions

• University of Bologna, tuition fees and exemptions for 2026/27

• National Medical Commission, Foreign Medical Graduate Licentiate Regulations, 2021