CST Application 2027: Dates, Eligibility and the Competition Ratio

Core Surgical Training (CST) applications for 2027 open at 10am on Thursday 22 October 2026 and close at 4pm on Thursday 19 November 2026, according to NHS England's specialty recruitment timelines page. Interviews sit inside a national window from Monday 11 January to Friday 2 April 2027, and initial offers are released at 5pm on Tuesday 6 April 2027. In 2025, the last year with a published ratio, 5,399 people applied for 630 CST posts, or 8.57 applicants per post.

Reviewed and updated 10 September 2026. Every date below is taken from NHS England's own pages, and any figure that is still the 2026 position is labelled as such.

Key takeaways

• CST 2027 applications open at 10am on Thursday 22 October 2026 and close at 4pm on Thursday 19 November 2026 on Oriel.
• The 2027 interview window runs from Monday 11 January to Friday 2 April 2027, with initial offers at 5pm on Tuesday 6 April 2027.
• CST-specific sub-dates for 2027 (MSRA window, evidence upload, interview days) are not yet published; in 2026 they were 6 to 19 January, 16 to 26 February and 2 to 11 March.
• In 2025 there were 5,399 applications for 630 posts, a ratio of 8.57 to 1, or roughly 12% of applicants appointed.
• The Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act applies from shortlisting through to offers in 2027, and the 2027 criteria are still to be set in regulations.
• The 2027 person specification caps prior surgical experience at 18 months whole-time equivalent, excluding foundation placements.

When do CST 2027 applications open and close?

CST 2027 applications open at 10am on Thursday 22 October 2026 and close at 4pm on Thursday 19 November 2026. These are the confirmed Round 1 dates that NHS England published on 24 February 2026 for every CT1 and ST1 specialty.

The same page confirms the interview window and the offer dates. The table below separates what is confirmed for 2027 from what is still the 2026 position.

In practice, the CST application form on Oriel takes longer than candidates expect, because the employment history must be complete with every gap explained. Start it in the first week the window is open.

What are the 2027 sub-dates for the MSRA, evidence upload and CST interviews?

The CST-specific sub-dates for 2027 are not yet published. NHS England's core surgery recruitment timelines page carries a "Future rounds" heading whose only content is "Details of future rounds will be added once available".

What can be planned against is the shape of the 2026 round, which is the most recent one published in full. The 2026 dates below are reference points, not 2027 facts.

That said, the national 2027 interview window opens on 11 January, so a January MSRA and a March interview block would fit it exactly as they did in 2026. Treat the 2026 pattern as a planning assumption until NHS England updates the CST timelines page, which in 2025 happened on 15 October.

Who is eligible to apply for CST in 2027?

To be eligible for CST in 2027 you need a primary medical qualification, full GMC registration at the time of application, evidence of foundation competence, and no more than 18 months of surgical experience. These criteria come from NHS England's Core Surgical Training CT1 2027 person specification.

The person specification states the experience cap in exact words: "You must have 18 months or less experience (whole time equivalent) in Surgical specialties (not including Foundation placements) at the advertised post start date."

How is foundation competence evidenced?

Foundation competence must be demonstrated within the 3.5 years before the post start date through one of four routes: current UK Foundation Programme affiliation, enrolment in a GMC-approved specialty training programme, a Foundation Programme Certificate of Completion, or 12 months of post-registration experience plus a CREST form.

You must also hold a licence to practise when the post starts, and you cannot already hold, or be eligible for, a Certificate of Completion of Training.

What is the CST competition ratio?

The most recent published CST competition ratio is 8.57 applicants per post: 5,399 applications for 630 posts in the 2025 round, according to NHS England's 2025 competition ratios page dated 24 July 2025. That is roughly one appointment for every nine applications, or about 12% of applicants.

However, the 2026 round was the first under the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act, and NHS England reported in June 2026 that Round 1 applications fell to about 16,000 prioritised candidates across all specialties. A CST-specific 2026 ratio has not been published, so no 2026 figure is quoted here.

How does prioritisation affect CST applications in 2027?

For 2027, prioritisation applies from shortlisting through to offers, which means it decides who is invited to interview and not only who receives a post. NHS England's information page for applicants, updated 6 March 2026, states that "prioritisation will apply from shortlisting through to offers".

Prioritisation is the mechanism created by the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act 2026 that ranks defined groups of applicants ahead of others in medical specialty recruitment. In 2026 it applied at offer only.

The 2027 criteria themselves are not yet set. The same page says the definition of "significant NHS experience" will be set out in regulations intended to be ready before the autumn 2026 application round. Until those regulations publish, nobody can tell you which group you fall into, and any site that claims to is guessing.

How is a CST application scored in 2027?

The CST selection score is a combination of the MSRA, the portfolio station and the management and clinical station, and the published weighting is the 2026 position: MSRA 10%, portfolio 45%, management and clinical 45%, on a 100-point scale. NHS England's applying page says the MSRA is "scaled onto a 0–10-point scale".

The MSRA also decides who is interviewed at all. In 2026, our fact table records that only the top-scoring 1,200 applicants at the MSRA were invited to interview and evidence upload; the 2027 cut is not yet published. There is no Oriel self-assessment: candidates upload an index page with A to E entries per domain instead.

The coresurgeryinterview question bank is built around this split, with 299 questions across the portfolio, management and clinical stations and an MSRA bank included, for £97 with access to 2 April 2027.

What happens between submitting the CST application and the interview?

Between submission and interview there are four steps: longlisting, the MSRA, interview invitations, and the portfolio evidence upload. NHS England's applying page says most eligibility checks are not completed until after MSRA results are confirmed, which in 2026 was expected in February.

1. Longlisting is the initial check that your application meets the person specification. In practice it is finished after the MSRA.
2. The MSRA is a 170-minute computer-based test at Pearson VUE centres, taken by every longlisted applicant. In 2026 the window was 6 to 19 January.
3. Interview invitations follow the MSRA ranking. In 2026 they were sent on Friday 13 February, and slots were booked on Oriel first come, first served.
4. Evidence upload opens after invitations. In 2026 the portal ran from Monday 16 to Thursday 26 February, and missing it withdrew the application.

That said, the order matters more than the dates: your portfolio evidence is uploaded in the fortnight before interview, so the index sheet and supervisor letters need to be ready in January, not February.

What should CST applicants be doing before 22 October 2026?

Before 22 October 2026, CST applicants should be closing audit loops, collecting supervisor letters with GMC numbers, logging operative cases, and starting MSRA question practice. Every one of those items feeds a scored component that cannot be improved after the application closes.

• Log every case you have been involved in, because the operative experience domain grades 40 or more cases as an A in the 2025/26 guidance.
• Ask supervisors now for letters that carry their GMC number, since evidence without one scores zero.
• Draft your employment history with exact dates and every gap explained, ready to paste into Oriel.
• Book a Pearson VUE slot the day the MSRA invitation arrives; in 2026 invitations were due by 15 December.
• Practise spoken answers under time. The free sample scenarios at coresurgeryinterview are a reasonable first test of whether you can fill five minutes.

Where is the official CST 2027 guidance published?

The official CST 2027 guidance is published by NHS England on its core surgery pages at medical.hee.nhs.uk, with London and the South East as the national lead recruiter. The applying, interviews, timelines and portfolio guidance pages were all last reviewed in October 2025 and still describe the 2026 round.

Be careful with regional deanery pages. Several still describe in-person selection centres and November adverts, both long superseded. When a deanery page and the national page disagree, the national page is current.

The coresurgeryinterview guide pages link each figure back to the NHS England page it came from, and this post will be updated the week the 2027 CST timelines publish.