What changed in the new TOEFL (2026)?

If you last looked at TOEFL more than a year ago, close whatever tab you have open about it. On 21 January 2026, ETS didn't tweak TOEFL iBT — it replaced it. New scale, new task types, a structural change to two of the four sections, and one entire category of question removed outright. Here's what actually changed, fact by fact.

This isn't an update — it's a new exam

The scoring scale changed, the task types changed, the structure changed. Someone who prepared for TOEFL in 2024 would recognise almost nothing about the 2026 version except the name. That matters for a practical reason: a lot of existing TOEFL content — blog posts, YouTube explainers, even some paid courses — still describes the pre-2026 exam, because it was written before the redesign existed. Treat any TOEFL resource without a clear 2026 date on it as describing a different test.

The scale: band 1–6 replaces 0–120

TOEFL now reports a band score from 1 to 6, in 0.5-point steps, for each of the four sections and for the test overall — the overall figure is the mean of the four section bands. The familiar 0–120 total is gone as the primary score. If you're trying to work out what your old TOEFL score, or a university's old TOEFL requirement, means on the new scale, see our full band, CEFR and legacy score conversion table.

Where did Integrated Writing and Integrated Speaking go?

This is the single most-searched question about the redesign, so the direct answer: they were removed. There are no integrated tasks left in TOEFL at all.

Every legacy TOEFL test-taker remembers the format — read a passage, listen to a lecture, then write or speak a response that combines both. That task shape doesn't exist any more. Every task in the 2026 exam is single-modality: a Writing task responds to a piece of text or a scenario, not to a passage-plus-lecture pair; a Speaking task responds to a heard sentence or an interview question, not to a summary of what you just read and heard. If a prep site is still teaching you the "template" for Integrated Writing or Integrated Speaking, it's coaching you for a task that no longer appears on the exam.

12 new task types, with new official names

The 12 task types all carry new ETS names that didn't exist before 2026 — genuinely new terminology, which is part of why searching for them turns up so little existing content:

• Reading: Complete the Words, Read in Daily Life, Read an Academic Passage — see our Reading breakdown.
• Listening: Listen and Choose a Response, Listen to a Conversation, Listen to an Announcement, Listen to an Academic Talk — see our Listening breakdown.
• Writing: Build a Sentence, Write an Email, Write for an Academic Discussion — see our Writing breakdown.
• Speaking: Listen and Repeat, Take an Interview — see our Speaking breakdown, and our dedicated Take an Interview guide for that task specifically.

Complete the Words is worth flagging on its own: it's a C-test format — the second half of every second word is deleted from an authentic paragraph, and you fill in 10 gaps. Nothing like it existed in the legacy exam's Reading section.

Reading and Listening are now adaptive

Reading and Listening use a two-stage adaptive design: a router stage, then a harder or easier module depending on how you did in the router. Writing and Speaking are not adaptive — every test-taker sees a fixed, linear sequence. This is a real structural change from the legacy exam, and it changes how you should think about "how am I doing" mid-test. Full detail on how that scoring works: our TOEFL scoring guide

How long is the new TOEFL?

Roughly two hours including directions. The timed content across the four sections adds up to about 90 minutes: Reading 30 minutes, Listening 29, Writing 23, Speaking 8. That's shorter than the legacy exam's runtime, and part of why ETS describes the redesign as a leaner, faster test.

Dual score reporting: the 0–120 figure sticks around until Jan 2028

Because so many institutions' admissions policies are still written against the old 0–120 scale, ETS is dual-reporting scores: score reports issued between 21 January 2026 and January 2028 show both the new band score and a converted legacy figure. Two things worth being precise about: it's an overall conversion only — there's no legacy figure per section — and it's transition-only. After January 2028, the 0–120 figure disappears from reports entirely. For the actual conversion numbers, see our score conversion table.

What this means for your prep

If a task type, a scoring description, or a "how TOEFL works" explainer doesn't match what's on this page, it's describing the pre-2026 exam. That includes templates built for Integrated Writing and Integrated Speaking, raw-score-to-120 conversion charts, and anything describing all four sections as non-adaptive. Start from the new task names and the new band scale, and check anything older against a 2026 source before trusting it.

Sources

Structural and timing facts above come from ETS's TOEFL iBT Test Content page; the dual-reporting window and legacy conversion come from ETS's TOEFL iBT Score Scale Update page; task-type names and structure additionally cross-checked against the TOEFL iBT Technical Manual, ETS Research Report RR-25-12 (Manna, Li, Papageorgiou & Gu, 2025). Both ETS sources note their 2026 specifications remain subject to minor revision as operational data comes in — re-check before treating any number here as permanent. ScoreFluent is not affiliated with or endorsed by ETS.

ScoreFluent's scored PTE Academic practice is live, and LanguageCert Academic and TOEFL iBT (2026 redesign) practice are live too, in beta — every one of the 12 new task types, a free quick score on every attempt plus a paid Verified report, adaptive mock tests, and Flo tutoring built on the 2026 format. Start practising TOEFL free.