Trends and Data from the NRMP Main Match 2026

Pre-Med & Medical School
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53,373 applicants enrolled in the NRMP Match Program for 2026. 48,050 certified a rank list and entered the Match.

38,354 applicants match to a PGY1 positions, an increase of 687 matches (1.8%) over 2025.

  • U.S. MD seniors continue to represent the largest applicant group in 2026 with 20,934 active applicants, an increase of 566 from last year. Once again, U.S. MD seniors achieved a PGY-1 match rate of 93.5 percent, a rate that has held constant since the 2024 Match.
  • U.S. DO seniors achieved their highest PGY-1 match rate on record. There were 8,503 active applicants, an increase of 111 over last year, with a PGY-1 match rate of 93.2 percent, an increase of 0.6 percent from 2025.
  • U.S. citizen international medical graduates (IMGs) accounted for 4,210 active applicants in 2026, a decrease of 377 from 2025, while the PGY-1 match rate rose to 70 percent, the highest on record**.** The PGY-1 match rate for U.S. IMGs has trended upward since 2022, even as the number of active U.S. IMG applicants has declined over the same period.
  • Non-U.S. citizen IMGs accounted for 11,944 active applicants, an increase of 479 from 2025, while the PGY-1 match rate declined to 56.4 percent, the lowest level observed in five years.

NOTE that the Match rate for US MD seniors and US DO seniors is now basically identical five years after the Match unification in 2020.

Specialties

Pediatrics has a disastrous year. There were 252 unfilled positions before SOAP. This is the worst match in history for pediatrics.

Emergency medicine had its 3rd worst Match in history with 144 unfilled positions in the main Match. Surprisingly even elite programs (such as the Univ of Michigan which had 9 unfilled positions) didn’t fill in the main match. Post SOAP, there were still 64 unfilled positions.

Internal Medicine and Family Medicine both failed to fill all their open residency slots. FM had 899 vacancies after the main Match and IM had 537.
The number of Family Medicine unfilled programs continues to increase at rate higher than all other specialties, putting the future of primary care into question.

Psychiatry added an additional 220 residency slots for its specialty in this year’s Match and filled all of them.

If you want to take a deeper dive into the numbers–

For state-specific data–

For data by program–

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Thanks for sharing this. May I ask how to interpret the data? For example, in NJ Dermatology (PGY-2) 6 6. Same goes with other competitive specialties or other state.

Does this mean there is only opening of 6 positions for the whole state of NJ for Dermatology residency? That seems be so little. And no wonder the competition would be so fierce.

Thanks

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Yes, that’s exactly what it means. in the entire state of NJ, there are six entry-level (PGY2) dermatology residency training slots offered.

There are only 546 dermatology PGY2 slots available nationally.

Dermatology is PGY2 specialty, meaning that all derm residents must complete an intern or preliminary year in internal medicine before they start their dermatology training.

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Okay, I have a very simplistic question. Where’s ophthalmology on the lists? I suppose it’s a (PGY-2) program because those individuals need to do an internship, but I would have thought it would be listed somewhere.

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@AustenNut

Ophthalmology and urology hold their own separate matches.

Ophthalmology’s match is called the San Francisco Match

Urology’s match is the Urology Match

https://www.auanet.org/meetings-and-education/for-residents/urology-and-specialty-matches

Neither are part of the NRMP match.

Because ophthalmology requires a separate PGY 1 intern year before starting their formal eye surgery training, ophtho students may take part in the NRMP match to find a transitional or preliminary year residency program that they complete before moving onto their actual training program.

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