More than 30,000 foreign university qualifications were officially recognised in Spain in 2025. Medical degrees made up over 80% of all qualifications validated that year, a record that has put added pressure on the route into specialist medical training.
Sources at the Ministry of Health told the outlet that the 2027 MIR call has attracted an exceptional number of applicants from outside the European Union. The ministry is preparing contingency measures, but it has not yet announced the total number of candidates.
The provisional list of admitted candidates is expected this week. The examination is scheduled for 23 January 2027. The final list will show how many applicants are competing for the available places.
The number of approved qualifications helps explain the concern. Nearly five times as many non-EU doctors had their qualifications recognised in the past year as the number of graduates from Spanish medical faculties in the same academic year. That imbalance could intensify competition for specialist training places.
Some allocation details remain unclear. A total of 968 places are reserved for non-residents, with a 10% quota for non-EU applicants. The figures will not reveal how many non-EU doctors can also apply through the ordinary route because they hold Spanish residency. The MIR process is separate from regional hiring, including the Andalusian Health Service’s doctor job-bank rankings.
Approvals accelerated after the Ministry of Universities worked through thousands of applications that had piled up over several years. That pace prompted the Organización Médica Colegial, or OMC, to call for stricter checks of clinical competence, arguing that the current process focuses too heavily on paperwork. It has pointed to clinical simulations used in France and Germany. The United Kingdom is another example it has cited.
Sanidad’s options may be limited by the responsibilities of other departments. Ministry sources said some possible measures concern applicants’ administrative status, which falls outside the ministry’s remit. Sanidad can assess changes to the selection process or compensatory measures for the MIR call.
