The EPSO AD8 AI and Cybersecurity Competition Is Open

The notice for EPSO/AD/430/26 was published on 8 September 2026, and the EPSO AD8 competition for administrators in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity is open. Applications close on 13 October 2026 at 12.00 midday, Brussels time. EPSO is seeking 240 successful candidates in AI and 254 in cybersecurity — 494 places, one of the larger specialist competitions it has run.

Everything below comes from the official text, published in the Official Journal as C/2026/4668. Where an earlier version of this page speculated, it has been replaced by what the notice actually says.

The EPSO AD8 competition at a glance

Grade AD 8 is the senior-specialist entry grade: on the salary scale currently in force it starts at €8,911.48 a month in basic pay before allowances. Where it sits relative to AD 5 and AD 7 is set out in our guide to the EU grade ladder.

Am I eligible for the EPSO AD8 competition?

Three things have to be true on the closing date. You must be a national of an EU member state in full enjoyment of your civic rights. You must have a thorough knowledge (C1) of one official EU language and a satisfactory knowledge (B2) of another. And you must clear the education-and-experience gate, which works as a sliding scale:

Two details do real work here. The experience counts only if it was acquired after the date of the final decision to award the diploma — not after you sat the exams. And it must be relevant to the field you applied for, judged against the duties in Annex II of the notice for that field.

There is one genuine surprise in the notice. Despite being a grade higher, this EPSO AD8 competition asks for exactly the same experience as the AD 7 IT competition run earlier in 2026. AD 8 is not a harder door to walk through; the duties behind it are simply more senior.

The two fields publish different lists of qualifying degree areas, and the differences are not cosmetic — a degree that is listed outright in one field may need documented "focus" evidence in the other, or fall into the nine-year bucket. We set the two lists side by side in our guide to choosing between AI and cybersecurity.

How the competition is organised

Four phases: application, testing, scoring and eligibility check, then the reserve lists. All testing is done remotely under proctoring — there is no in-person assessment centre in the current EPSO model. Our test-day guide covers what that looks like in practice.

Every candidate who submits an application by the deadline is invited to sit the tests. There is no pre-selection on the application form, which means the eligibility screening most candidates expect at the start happens at the end instead — and only for a fraction of the field.

The tests, in full

Note the second row carefully. Numerical and abstract reasoning do not have separate pass marks — they share a single combined score out of 20, and you need 10 of it. A weak numerical performance can be rescued by a strong abstract one, and the reverse. Verbal reasoning stands alone at 10 out of 20 and cannot be rescued by anything.

The EUFTE is not a language test and not a test of factual EU knowledge. EPSO publishes the documentation the essay is based on ahead of the test date, and you receive the same documentation again during the test along with the assignment. It is assessed against published anchors for written communication.

The languages are worth a second look, because they are counter-intuitive. Any two of the 24 official EU languages may be chosen — there is no restriction to English, French or German. But the reasoning tests run in language 1, while both the field-related MCQ and the essay run in language 2. Your technical test is sat in your second language.

What actually decides the reserve list

This is the part of the notice that should change how you prepare, and it is easy to read past.

The sequence is strict, and each step discards people. The reasoning tests are scored first, and only for candidates who sat every test — miss or abandon one and nothing you wrote is processed at all. Candidates who clear the reasoning gates have their field MCQ scored. Those who reach 15 out of 30 are ranked by that score.

Then comes the cut that matters. EPSO scores the EUFTE essay and runs the eligibility check only for candidates taken in descending order of that ranking, in principle no more than 1.5 times the number of places sought — roughly 360 candidates in AI and 381 in cybersecurity. Below that line, your essay is never read, your documents are never examined, and your participation ends.

The practical reading: the reasoning tests cannot win you a place, but they can lose you one before your expertise is ever measured. Every hour spent on them is insurance rather than investment — and the insurance is compulsory.

How the reserve lists are built

Once the essays are scored and eligibility is checked, the Selection Board fills each field's reserve list in descending order of the field-MCQ ranking, from candidates who passed every test and were found eligible, until the number sought is reached or the pool runs out. Candidates who tie for the last place are all added. The lists are published alphabetically, not by score.

Being on a reserve list is not a job. Recruiting services in the institutions and agencies approach candidates whose profile interests them for a separate interview, conducted outside EPSO's procedure and usually in English or French. Inclusion on the list confers no right to recruitment.

What to do before 13 October

• Choose your field deliberately. You get one, it is fixed at the deadline, and it determines the only test that ranks you. Our AI-or-cybersecurity guide compares the two gates and the two duty annexes.
• Read Annex II for your field. It is the closest thing to a syllabus for the 30-question test, because the test is built from it.
• Choose your two languages on the right basis. Language 2 carries your technical test and your essay; language 1 carries only the reasoning tests.
• Practise the reasoning tests. They are identical in both fields and they are the first hurdle scored.
• Start collecting documents now, even though they are not due until January. Employment certificates with exact dates, contracts, and diplomas showing the date of the final award decision. If you reach the eligibility check, an undocumented year is a lost year.

The rest of EPSO's 2026 calendar

If this EPSO AD8 competition is not your profile, four more are due before the year ends. All four carry provisional dates, so treat them as direction rather than diary entries:

* Dates to be confirmed, per EPSO's planner of upcoming selection procedures.

Frequently asked questions

Every figure on this page comes from the notice of competition EPSO/AD/430/26, OJ C/2026/4668 of 8 September 2026. That text is the only one that binds — check it before you rely on anything here.