CAO Points 2026 vs 2025: What Actually Changed, and Why

Here's a result that trips a lot of people up: Leaving Cert grades were down in 2026 compared with 2025, yet CAO points for most courses went up. That's not a contradiction — it's exactly what you'd expect once you understand what actually drives points from one year to the next.

The headline numbers

Across the courses tracked, 627 courses saw points increase in 2026, 451 decreased, and 90 stayed exactly the same — out of 1,437 courses compared. The average change was +5.9 points, with a median of +2, meaning a small number of large increases pulled the average up while most courses moved only modestly.

Why points rose while grades fell

This is the part worth actually understanding, because it explains a lot of confusion every results season. Two things happened at once in 2026:

Grades genuinely fell. The State Examinations Commission's post-marking adjustment — the standardisation applied to keep results broadly consistent year to year — dropped from 5.8% of grades adjusted in 2025 to 4% in 2026. H1 grades fell from 12.1% of all grades to 10.1%. On paper, this year's cohort scored lower than last year's.

But far more people applied, competing for the same number of places. 95,710 people applied to the CAO in 2026 — 6,402 more than in 2025. Crucially, 20,527 of those applicants were repeat or deferred applicants carrying grades from earlier, more generously-marked years, competing directly against this year's lower-scoring cohort for the same limited seats.

CAO points are set by demand relative to supply, not by how "good" a year's grades are in isolation. More applicants chasing the same number of places pushes the points cut-off up, even if the underlying grades are objectively lower. It's a reminder that points are a moving target shaped by everyone else's applications and grades that year, not a fixed bar you can compare cleanly across years.

Where the biggest moves happened

The overall averages hide some sharp swings in specific fields:

• Construction and engineering courses saw points surge, reflecting continued high demand in a sector with strong graduate employment.
• Computer science points fell in several colleges, including a 72-point drop at UCC — a correction after a period of very high demand and points in the sector.
• Veterinary applications rose 82% even as points for the course fell, an unusual combination worth noting if you're considering it.
• Primary teaching points fell across all colleges offering the course.
• TUS and Dundalk IT saw institution-wide increases, suggesting rising demand for those colleges specifically rather than just individual courses.

The 2026 comparison also covers 61 courses that are new to the CAO system this year, across 31 institutions in total.

What this actually means for you

A few practical takeaways if you're applying in future years:

Don't treat last year's points as a firm target. Because points move with applicant volume as much as with grade difficulty, a course that needed 450 points last year could realistically need anywhere from 420 to 480 this year depending on how many people apply and how they perform.

A falling-points course isn't necessarily an easier course to succeed in — computer science points falling reflects demand correcting, not the course getting less rigorous.

Rising applications to a course with falling points (like veterinary this year) is worth watching closely — it suggests points may climb again once that demand catches up.

If you want to check how a specific course actually moved rather than relying on national averages, CourseCompass's CAO Points 2026 vs 2025 tool lets you search individual courses and see both their 2026 first-round points and how those compare to 2025's first-round and final-round figures — a more useful comparison than any single national average.