How Many Times a Year Is ALES Held? ÖSYM Exam Sessions Explained

Contents

1. How many times a year is ALES held?

2. What are the ALES exam dates for 2026?

3. How long is an ALES score valid?

4. What does one ALES exam session involve?

5. How has the ALES calendar changed between years?

6. Do universities accept GRE or GMAT instead of ALES?

7. Which ALES calendar points are often misread?

8. How should you plan around the ALES sessions?

9. Real-World Examples

10. Frequently Asked Questions

11. References

12. Legal Notice

Introduction

ALES is held three times a year in the ÖSYM calendar for 2026: ALES/1 on 10 May, ALES/2 on 2 August and ALES/3 on 29 November, according to ÖSYM’s schedule as reported by Yeni Şafak on 25 February 2026 and later updates. The 2025 calendar, reported by BirGün on 12 February 2025, also contained three sessions, in April, July and November.

ALES is the centralised examination administered by the Student Selection and Placement Centre (ÖSYM) and used in applications to graduate programs and in academic staff recruitment in Turkey. Its Turkish name is usually rendered in English as the Academic Personnel and Graduate Education Exam, the wording used in METU’s directive for international graduate applicants. In graduate admissions, universities use ALES results for both master’s and doctoral programs.

The search phrase “how many times a year is ALES held” usually hides a practical question: which session should I take so that my score arrives before a graduate school deadline? This article answers both. It relies on ÖSYM statements reproduced by the Demirören News Agency (DHA) and Cumhuriyet, ÖSYM calendar coverage in Turkish national newspapers, and the published admission rules of Turkish universities. Mezun Kampüsü follows graduate application calendars, which is why the article pairs each ALES date with its effect on applications.

Two notes on scope. First, ÖSYM sets a new calendar every year, and the 2026 ALES/2 date moved once after publication, so every date below should be read as “as reported in 2026”. Second, many universities set separate rules for international applicants, and several accept the GRE or GMAT in place of ALES. Those differences are covered in Section 6.

How many times a year is ALES held?

ALES is held three times a year in ÖSYM’s 2025 and 2026 calendars. ÖSYM labels the sessions by their order in the year: ALES/1 in spring, ALES/2 in summer and ALES/3 in autumn. Each session has its own application window, exam day and results date. The number of sessions is set in ÖSYM’s annual exam calendar, so the count for later years should be confirmed when ÖSYM publishes that calendar.

The three-session pattern appears in both calendars reviewed for this article. BirGün reported on 12 February 2025 that ÖSYM had scheduled 2025-ALES/1 for 13 April, 2025-ALES/2 for 6 July and 2025-ALES/3 for 23 November. Yeni Şafak reported on 25 February 2026 that the 2026 calendar again contained three sessions, on 10 May, 26 July and 29 November. The 26 July date was later moved, as Section 5 explains.

Each session is a full sitting of the same exam. A candidate does not need to take ALES/1 before ALES/2, and the sessions are not levels or stages. A candidate who sits more than one session in a year receives a separate result for each. How universities treat several valid results varies; some application systems ask the applicant which result to submit, and others retrieve scores directly from ÖSYM. METU’s Department of Environmental Engineering, for example, stated on 30 January 2026 that it would retrieve ALES/1-2026 scores from the system once ÖSYM announced them.

The name of each session also carries the year. “2026-ALES/2” means the second ALES session of 2026. This labeling appears on ÖSYM announcements, result documents and many university application forms, so applicants should note it when a program asks which session a score came from.

A three-session year gives applicants some flexibility, but the sessions are not evenly spaced around university deadlines. Bilkent University’s Graduate School of Engineering and Science, for example, set 9 November 2026 as its Spring 2027 deadline, before the 2026-ALES/3 exam. The practical answer to “how often is ALES offered” is therefore three times a year, with the useful session depending on the target program’s calendar rather than on the exam alone.

What are the ALES exam dates for 2026?

The 2026 ALES dates are 10 May for ALES/1, 2 August for ALES/2 and 29 November for ALES/3, based on ÖSYM’s calendar as reported by Yeni Şafak on 25 February 2026, Milliyet’s report on the ALES/2 postponement, and Milli Gazete on 24 September 2026. Results dates are 5 June, 21 August and 17 December 2026. As of 26 October 2026, the ALES/1 and ALES/2 sessions had taken place and ALES/3 applications had closed.

The table below brings the 2026 ALES calendar together. Application windows come from Yeni Şafak’s 25 February 2026 report; the ALES/2 exam and results dates come from DHA’s 31 July 2026 report of ÖSYM’s statement; the ALES/3 late application day comes from Milli Gazete’s 24 September 2026 report.

Table 1. ALES 2026 sessions: application window, exam date and results date, per ÖSYM’s calendar as reported in the Turkish press

Three details in the table matter for planning. The application window closes roughly five to seven weeks before the exam, so a decision to sit ALES has to be made well ahead of exam day. All three 2026 sessions fell on a Sunday. Results arrived between about two and a half and four weeks after the exam, a gap derived from the dates in the table.

Applications are made through ÖSYM’s online candidate system (AİS) or its mobile application, according to Milli Gazete’s 24 September 2026 report on ALES/3. A late application day is also listed for ALES/3. The exact rules for late applications are set in ÖSYM’s guide for each session and should be read there.

The 2026 calendar will not repeat in 2027. ÖSYM publishes a new annual calendar, and the 2025 and 2026 dates differ by several weeks, as Section 5 shows. Applicants planning for 2027 intakes should wait for ÖSYM’s 2027 calendar rather than projecting 2026 dates forward.

How long is an ALES score valid?

An ALES result is valid for five years from the date it is announced, according to ÖSYM’s statement on 2026-ALES/2 reported by DHA on 31 July 2026. A five-year window means a score from one session can be used across several application cycles. Universities, however, may set their own validity rules for admission, so the period a specific graduate school accepts should be checked on that school’s page.

The five-year rule appears in the same terms in university material. Bilkent University’s Graduate School of Engineering and Science states the rule directly on its application requirements page for the Spring 2027 intake:

ALES and GRE scores are valid for 5 years.
— Bilkent University Graduate School of Engineering and Science, Application Requirements & Dates page (Spring 2027 intake), accessed 26 October 2026

Not every university uses the same window. The METU Directive for International Student Applications, Admissions and Registrations to Graduate Programs, approved by the METU Senate on 20 May 2014 and shown as last updated on 23 December 2025, states in Article 6(2) that ALES results are valid for three years and that GRE and GMAT results are valid for five years. That difference is a matter of institutional rule rather than a contradiction of ÖSYM. ÖSYM defines how long a result document stays valid, and each university decides which results it will consider.

Validity interacts with the three-session calendar in a useful way. Because a score lasts several years, an applicant does not have to sit ALES in the same season as the application. A score from 2026-ALES/1 can, under a five-year rule, support applications in later intakes. Where a university uses a shorter window, the session date matters more.

Validity is counted from the results announcement, not the exam day, according to the DHA report of ÖSYM’s statement. For 2026-ALES/2, that announcement date was 21 August 2026. Applicants should keep the result document, which shows the session name and announcement date, because graduate schools may check both.

What does one ALES exam session involve?

One ALES session is a single morning sitting of 100 questions, 50 numerical and 50 verbal, with 150 minutes of answering time, according to ÖSYM’s statement on 2026-ALES/2 reported by DHA on 31 July 2026. The exam starts at 10:15 and ends at 12:45. Candidates are not admitted to the building after 10:00. Eligible candidates with disabilities receive 30 extra minutes.

The same format applied to 2026-ALES/1. Türkgün reported on 10 May 2026 that the spring session also contained 100 questions in total, split evenly between numerical and verbal sections, with a 150-minute duration. Holding the format constant across sessions is what allows a result from any session to serve the same purpose in graduate admissions.

The 2026-ALES/2 session gives a sense of scale. ÖSYM reported 152,449 applicants for that single session, sitting in 81 provinces across Turkey, as reported by DHA and Cumhuriyet on 31 July 2026. The table below sets out the logistics ÖSYM announced for the session.

Table 2. Scale of the 2026-ALES/2 session on 2 August 2026, per ÖSYM figures reported by DHA and Cumhuriyet on 31 July 2026

These figures describe one session, not a full year. ÖSYM statements reviewed for this article give applicant numbers for 2026-ALES/2 only, so a yearly total cannot be stated here without estimation. A total built by multiplying one session by three would be an approximation and is not used.

For international applicants, the main point is that ALES runs inside ÖSYM’s national exam system on a fixed national timetable. Whether a non-Turkish applicant is expected to sit ALES at all depends on the university, which Section 6 covers.

How has the ALES calendar changed between years?

The ALES calendar keeps three sessions but shifts dates from year to year. In 2025, ÖSYM scheduled the sessions on 13 April, 6 July and 23 November, according to BirGün on 12 February 2025. In 2026, the sessions moved to 10 May, 2 August and 29 November. The spring session moved about four weeks later, and the 2026 summer session was postponed once after the calendar appeared.

The 2026-ALES/2 change shows how a published date can move. Milliyet reported that ÖSYM moved 2026-ALES/2 from 26 July 2026 to 2 August 2026, linking the change to the NATO Summit. Yeni Şafak’s February 2026 calendar had listed 14 August 2026 for ALES/2 results; after the postponement, ÖSYM’s statement reported by DHA on 31 July 2026 gave 21 August 2026.

The sequence below shows how one ALES session moved through its stages in 2026, using 2026-ALES/2 as the example:

1. ÖSYM’s 2026 calendar, reported by Yeni Şafak on 25 February 2026, lists 2026-ALES/2 for 26 July 2026.

2. Candidates apply between 10 and 18 June 2026, according to the same calendar.

3. ÖSYM moves the exam to 2 August 2026, as reported by Milliyet.

4. ÖSYM announces 152,449 applicants and the session logistics on 31 July 2026, as reported by DHA.

5. Candidates sit the exam on Sunday, 2 August 2026.

6. ÖSYM announces results on 21 August 2026, starting the five-year validity period.

The two calendars also differ in late-year timing. The 2025 autumn session was held on 23 November 2025, and the 2026 autumn session is set for 29 November 2026. Both autumn sessions fell on a Sunday, the day used for all six sessions in the two calendars reviewed.

Year-to-year shifts are the reason no fixed month can be promised for any ALES session. Applicants should treat “spring, summer and autumn” as the pattern and take the exact dates only from the year’s ÖSYM calendar.

Do universities accept GRE or GMAT instead of ALES?

Several Turkish universities accept the GRE, and in some cases the GMAT, in place of ALES, and several set different exam rules for international applicants. Bilkent University, METU and MEF University each describe a different arrangement in their published rules, reviewed in October 2026. The exam an international applicant needs depends on the university and program, so the ALES calendar may matter less than the GRE schedule for some applicants.

The published rules show the range. Bilkent University’s Graduate School of Engineering and Science states that ALES is required from resident Turkish citizens and that applicants who are not Turkish citizens may provide GRE General Test scores instead of ALES, describing the GRE as obligatory for foreign students. The METU directive for international graduate applicants lists ALES, GRE or GMAT results among eight evaluation criteria in Article 6(1).

MEF University’s graduate regulation, first published in the Official Gazette on 1 December 2019 (No. 30966) and amended in later years, states in Article 9(3) that the ALES requirement is not sought in applications from foreign-national candidates; the procedures for those applicants are set by the university senate. Istanbul Medipol University’s Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences describes ALES on its admissions page as the graduate entrance exam for Turkish students.

For a foreign national, these rules change the planning question. Where ALES is not required, the three ALES sessions are irrelevant to the application. Where the GRE is accepted instead, the applicant can follow the GRE testing schedule run by Educational Testing Service (ETS). Where ALES is required, its three sessions set the timeline.

International student status also matters. An international student is a person who is not a citizen of the Republic of Turkey and who is admitted to a higher education institution under international student status. Applicants with dual citizenship, or Turkish citizens who studied abroad, may fall under different rules, and university directives define those groups separately.

Which ALES calendar points are often misread?

Three points about the ALES calendar are often misread: that three sessions mean three chances in every application cycle, that the exam date is the date a score becomes usable, and that every university applies ÖSYM’s five-year validity. Each reading has a basis, but each overlooks how university deadlines and institutional rules interact with ÖSYM’s schedule, as the examples from 2026 show.

The first point concerns application cycles. A graduate school’s deadline usually falls between two ALES sessions, so in practice only the sessions whose results arrive before that deadline count. Bilkent University’s Graduate School of Engineering and Science, for instance, listed 9 November 2026 as its Spring 2027 application deadline, which is before both the 29 November 2026 exam and the 17 December 2026 results date of 2026-ALES/3.

The second point concerns timing within a session. A score becomes usable when ÖSYM announces results, not on exam day. Some universities allow for this gap. METU’s Department of Environmental Engineering stated on 30 January 2026 that candidates registered for 2026-ALES/1 could apply before results were announced, with the graduate school retrieving scores once ÖSYM published them, expected on 5 June 2026. That arrangement applied to one university’s fall 2026 applications and one session.

The third point concerns validity. ÖSYM’s five-year rule, reported by DHA on 31 July 2026, sets how long the result document is valid. The METU directive’s three-year rule for ALES shows that a university may accept a shorter window.

Other readings worth checking before relying on them:

• “ALES is held every month”: ÖSYM’s 2025 and 2026 calendars each list three sessions.

• “ALES is only for Turkish citizens”: ALES is open to candidates in ÖSYM’s system; whether a university requires it from foreign nationals is a separate question.

• “ALES/2 is harder than ALES/1”: the session number refers to order in the year; the reported format was the same in May and August 2026.

• “The calendar is fixed”: the 2026-ALES/2 date moved once after publication.

How should you plan around the ALES sessions?

Plan around ALES by starting from the target program’s deadline and working backward to a session whose results arrive in time. With three sessions a year and results about three weeks after each exam, as in 2026, the useful session is usually the one whose results date falls at least a few weeks before the graduate school closes applications. Confirm each date in ÖSYM’s calendar for the year.

The first step is to confirm whether the program requires ALES at all. As Section 6 shows, Bilkent University’s engineering and science graduate school accepts the GRE from applicants who are not Turkish citizens, and MEF University’s regulation does not seek ALES from foreign-national applicants. Bilkent’s page states that ALES is required from resident Turkish citizens.

The second step is to match sessions to intakes. Turkish graduate schools commonly run fall and spring admissions, and the exact windows are published by each graduate school. For the 2026-2027 fall intake in METU’s Department of Environmental Engineering, applications ran from 23 February to 27 March 2026, so only a valid earlier score or the ALES/1-2026 arrangement described in Section 7 applied.

The third step is to keep track of validity. A result announced on 21 August 2026 under ÖSYM’s five-year rule lasts until August 2031 by ÖSYM’s measure (derived: announcement date plus five years), but a graduate school with a shorter window may stop accepting it earlier.

The checklist below turns those steps into actions:

• Read the target program’s admission page to see whether ALES, GRE or GMAT is accepted

• Note the program’s application deadline and the date results must be uploaded

• Find the ALES session in ÖSYM’s calendar whose results date falls before that deadline

• Mark the ÖSYM application window for that session, including any late application day

• Check the validity period the graduate school accepts for ALES results

• Save the ÖSYM result document showing the session name and announcement date

• Recheck ÖSYM and university announcements for date changes before applying

Seasonal changes are normal. ÖSYM sets a new calendar each year and can move a date, as it did for 2026-ALES/2. Graduate schools also revise deadlines between intakes. Treat any date in this article as a starting point for checking, not as the final word.

Real-World Examples

The examples in this section are illustrative scenarios created to explain situations applicants may encounter.

Scenario 1: Choosing between two sessions. Selin is a Turkish citizen finishing her bachelor’s degree and plans to apply for a fall master’s intake. Her target graduate school closes applications in late spring. Looking at the year’s ÖSYM calendar, she sees that the summer session’s results arrive after that deadline, while the spring session’s results arrive before it. She applies for ALES/1, marks the ÖSYM application window in her calendar, and keeps the autumn session as a backup for the following spring intake if her plans change.

Scenario 2: An international applicant who may not need ALES. Daniel holds a bachelor’s degree from outside Turkey and is not a Turkish citizen. He assumed he would have to sit ALES and was unsure how its three sessions would fit his plans. Reading the admission pages of two graduate schools, he finds that one accepts the GRE from applicants who are not Turkish citizens and the other does not require ALES from foreign nationals. He books a GRE date that fits the first program’s deadline and contacts the second program’s graduate school to confirm its document list.

Scenario 3: A score close to the end of its validity. Amira sat ALES some years ago and wants to apply for a doctoral program. Her result is still within ÖSYM’s five-year window, but the graduate school she prefers states a shorter validity period in its own directive. She compares the announcement date on her result document with the program’s rule and finds the score falls outside it. She registers for the next ALES session whose results arrive before the program’s following intake.

Scenario 4: A session date that moves. Kerem planned his summer around an ALES date printed in the original calendar. A few weeks before the exam, ÖSYM announced a new date one week later. Kerem checks his exam entry document in ÖSYM’s online system, confirms the new building and time, and recalculates when his results will be announced. He then checks that the new results date still falls before his target program’s deadline, which it does.

Frequently Asked Questions

About Mezun Kampüsü
Mezun Kampüsü is a platform that brings together the graduate programs, application calendars and academic announcements of universities in Turkey. For applicants timing an ALES session, it helps to see graduate school deadlines alongside entrance exam rules, so the right session can be chosen before an application window opens. Applicants can explore and compare programs through Atlas, follow application periods, track current announcements from universities, and start a free application through the Universities section.

Legal Notice

This article provides general information about the ALES exam calendar and its use in graduate admissions in Turkey. It is not personal academic, legal or financial advice. ÖSYM sets ALES dates in an annual calendar and can change them, as it did for 2026-ALES/2, and university admission rules, accepted exams and score validity periods vary between institutions and intakes. Applicants should confirm every date and requirement with ÖSYM and with the graduate school of the university they are applying to before acting on it. Institutional rules cited here include the METU Directive for International Student Applications, Admissions and Registrations to Graduate Programs and MEF University’s Graduate Education and Training Regulation.