UniversityDB

UK Clearing 2026 — the headline numbers

A briefing page for journalists, careers leads and anyone covering UK Clearing 2026. All figures derive from UCAS course data and official outcome sources, aggregated by UniversityDB. Every number on this page is reusable with attribution — please link back to https://universitydb.io/clearing/2026/data.

Press contact: hello@universitydb.io

How many UK undergraduate courses are realistically open at each grade band?

Of 51,538 UK undergraduate courses indexed by UniversityDB, 21,084 (40.9%) publish a UCAS-points typical offer that we can use to estimate clearing eligibility. Numbers below count courses whose published offer is at-or-below the band — a student at that band would not be over-offered.

Grade bandUCAS pointsCourses at-or-below% of indexed UG offerings
CCC9610,40049.3%
BBC11219,35191.8%
ABB12821,04399.8%
AAA14421,06399.9%
A*A*A16021,06399.9%
A*A*A*16821,06399.9%

Source: UCAS course feed via UniversityDB. Methodology: counts UK undergraduate course options with a published UCAS-points typical offer at-or-below each band. Excludes postgraduate courses and undergraduate courses without a published UCAS tariff.

Top universities by indexed clearing-eligible course count

Universities offering the largest number of UG courses with a published UCAS tariff — a reasonable proxy for raw clearing capacity, though it does not adjust for offer-grade restrictiveness or popularity.

1 Coventry University 1,3972 Liverpool Hope University 6023 Keele University 5224 University of Essex 4835 University of Wolverhampton 4026 University of Westminster, London 4027 University of Hertfordshire 3948 University of Portsmouth 3899 Oxford Brookes University 38010 Anglia Ruskin University 370

Subject mix among clearing-eligible courses

Twelve most-represented subjects across UK UG courses with a published UCAS tariff.

Business and management studies 1,373 courses
Events management 1,311 courses
Fashion, textiles, and jewellery 1,194 courses
Art 1,067 courses
Product design 1,007 courses
Graphic design 967 courses
Computer science 932 courses
Sociology 908 courses
Digital media, production, and technology 903 courses
Psychology 712 courses
Accounting and finance 699 courses
Economics 699 courses

For journalists

  • All numbers are reproducible from the public UCAS course feed and OfS outcomes. We're happy to share the underlying queries — email hello@universitydb.io.
  • Embargoed data drops the day before results day are available on request. The data above updates automatically as the underlying course feed changes.
  • Cite as: UniversityDB Clearing 2026 dataset, with a link to https://universitydb.io/clearing/2026/data.