UK SQE Pass Rates by Sitting: SQE1 and SQE2, 2024 to 2026

SQE pass rates get quoted loosely: one number, no sitting, no word on whether it counts resitters. The SRA publishes more than that. For each sitting it gives a pass rate for first-attempt candidates and one for all candidates, separately for FLK1, FLK2 and SQE1 as a whole, and it publishes breakdowns by background. This page collects every figure published from January 2024 to the July 2026 SQE1 sitting (42% overall, 47% first-time, published on 29 September 2026) and the April 2026 SQE2 sitting (83% overall; 85% for first-attempt candidates, which the SRA calls the highest SQE2 pass rate recorded to date), shows the January–July pattern, and sets out what the SRA itself says about why the numbers move. ProSyllabus is an independent study site. We are not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) or Kaplan, which delivers the SQE for the SRA; every rule below is quoted or summarised from their published pages, and the SRA decides every application.

SRA news 29 September 2026; SRA SQE Update April 2026; SRA news 27 August 2026; SRA "SQE four years" release, 29 January 2026.

To pass SQE1 you must pass both FLK1 and FLK2, which is why the SQE1 rate is always below either paper's. Scores are scaled from 0 to 500 with the pass mark set at 300; each paper has its own raw pass mark, mapped to 300. In July 2025 the mean scaled scores were 291.3 on FLK1 and 287.3 on FLK2 — both below the pass mark, which is what a sub-50% pass rate looks like from the inside. January 2026 was the largest recent sitting: 7,863 candidates completed both papers, 6,760 of them for the first time, and resitters were 14% of the cohort. In July 2026, 6,315 candidates completed both parts, 5,012 of them for the first time and 1,303 resitting one or both parts — about 21% resitters by our division. The SRA puts the July 2026 rates slightly above July 2025: 42% against 41% overall, and 47% against 46% first-time.

Part of the July dip is who sits in July. The SRA's four-year release shows resitters make up a much larger share of July cohorts, and resitters pass less often: "typically, around 20% of those who resit SQE1 pass". Across everyone who has taken SQE1, 54.3% passed at the first attempt, 9.9% on a second attempt and 1.9% on a third. For SQE2 the same release disagrees with itself: its attempts table gives 79.6% at the first attempt, 4.6% at the second and 0.3% at the third (which add up to its 84.5% total), while its later text says 4.2% and 0.2%. We print both; the table's figures are the ones that reconcile.

SQE2 has a single overall pass mark of 300 on the same 0–500 scale; there is no pass mark for any one of the 16 stations, though results show a breakdown by station. A resit means sitting all 16 stations again. The April 2026 mean scaled score was 341.1 (statistical report). The SRA's January 2026 release gave the first-attempt SQE2 range as 69% to 84%; April 2026's 85% came after it and is now the top of that range. The October 2023 sitting was unusual: it was the last chance for candidates who had passed the QLTS knowledge test, 34% of candidates were qualified lawyers, and the overall rate was 64% — 80% for others, 49% for qualified lawyers.

The SRA's own analysis cautions against reading too much into any one characteristic: university ranking and degree class together explain about 23% of the variance in SQE1 scores, and most of the variance is not explained by any background data it holds. For SQE2 the strongest predictor is the SQE1 score, which explains about 23.5% of the variance. Among LPC graduates, those who had taken SQE1 passed SQE2 far more often than those who had not — 83% against 36% in April 2024, and 81% against 47% in July 2025.

The SRA's January 2026 release puts the sittings together. It covers eight SQE1 and 12 SQE2 sittings from November 2021 to July 2025: more than 30,000 candidates assessed in 50 countries. 19,281 passed SQE1 — 66% of those who took it, once resits are counted — and 10,718 passed SQE2, 85% of its candidates. Those are the shares of unique candidates who had passed by the data cut-off, and they are not directly comparable with a single sitting's rate. Resits are one reason they run higher — a candidate who fails once and passes later counts as a pass in the cumulative figure but as a fail in the sitting where they fell short — but cohort mix and the observation window differ too, and some candidates still had attempts left at the cut-off. For planning, the per-sitting first-attempt rate is the honest number for your first go; the cumulative figure shows how many had got there by the cut-off.