Most lists of IMAT universities circulating online are working off last year's roster. That's a problem right now, because the roster itself just changed in more than one place - three separate programmes are either brand new or newly confirmed for the 2026/2027 cycle, and each one works differently enough that lumping them together would be misleading. Here's what's actually been published about each, and one that keeps getting mentioned but isn't actually new.

Short version: Florence just launched a brand-new English-taught medicine programme through the national IMAT, Padova has a new MedTech track still awaiting Ministry approval, and Campus Bio-Medico's MedTech is a private-university programme with its own separate entrance exam, not the IMAT.

University of Florence: Medicine and Surgery in English

The University of Florence has launched its first fully English-taught Medicine and Surgery degree, hosted in the Careggi Medical District. It's a single annual intake of 50 places total, open to both EU and non-EU applicants, admitted through the same nationally programmed IMAT route as every other public university on the list. Because this is the inaugural cohort, there is no historical cutoff data for it at all - nobody can tell you "last year's score needed" because there wasn't a last year.

University of Padova: the new MedTech track

Padova, our own university, has a second English-taught track in the works called MedTech: a six-year Medicine and Surgery degree with roughly 30 ECTS of biomedical engineering built directly into the standard clinical curriculum. As of publishing this, MedTech is still pending sign-off from the Ministry of Education - neither the final seat numbers nor whether it will run through the national IMAT are officially confirmed. The figures circulating informally are around 65 EU and 15 non-EU places, but treat that as provisional until Padova's admissions office publishes the actual bando. If it matters to your plans, check Padova's own course page directly before building anything around it.

Campus Bio-Medico di Roma: a MedTech programme too, but not through the IMAT

Confusingly, there's a second, unrelated programme also branded "MedTech" - this one at Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma (UCBM), a private university. It's a double-degree track combining Medicine and Biomedical Engineering, with 68 seats for EU and equivalent candidates plus 12 for non-EU candidates not resident in Italy, for the 2026/2027 year. The distinction that actually matters: UCBM is private and runs its own separate admission test rather than the national IMAT. For 2026/2027 that test is scheduled in Rome in February, months before the IMAT itself, and it requires English at B2 level. If you're only sitting the IMAT, this one isn't on your list - if you're open to a private-university route with a separate application and separate fees, it's worth researching on its own terms.

What about Cagliari?

Cagliari sometimes gets mentioned in the same breath as these, so it's worth being precise: the University of Cagliari's English-taught Medicine and Surgery actually debuted back in 2024, making it the first medical degree of any kind in Sardinia. It isn't new for this cycle. It is, however, still one of the newer and less-discovered names on the roster compared to the handful of universities that dominate every prep forum - which makes it worth researching on its own merits rather than assuming it's either a hidden gem or an unknown risk.

What "new" actually means for your ranking

It cuts both ways, and it's worth being honest about that rather than pitching any of this as a guaranteed easy win. A brand-new programme like Florence's hasn't yet been discovered by the prep-forum crowd that piles onto the same well-known names every cycle, which can mean genuinely lighter competition in its first year or two, purely because fewer people know to rank it. On the other hand, some candidates specifically go looking for new programmes hoping for an easier entry, which can just as easily push demand up instead of down. Nobody can promise you which way it goes before results are actually published - and a still-pending programme like Padova's MedTech isn't even guaranteed to run in the form currently being discussed.

What that means practically: don't rank a new or newer programme purely as a "safe fallback" assuming it'll be easy, and don't skip it either just because you can't Google a cutoff. Weigh it the same way you'd weigh any option - location, course structure, seat count, admission route, how it fits your own priorities - and treat missing historical data as a genuine unknown, not a shortcut in either direction.

Always check the current list yourself

Which universities are IMAT-accessible, how many seats each has, and which are new or still pending for a given cycle can all shift from year to year - always cross-check the current official list on Universitaly and each university's own admissions page before you finalize a ranking, rather than relying on any single article, including this one.

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New and newer English-taught medicine options, at a glance

  • University of Florence - Medicine and Surgery (English): Brand new, first cohort 2026/2027. 50 total seats, open to EU and non-EU, admitted via the national IMAT. Careggi Medical District.
  • University of Padova - Medicine and Surgery, MedTech track: New engineering-integrated track, still pending Ministry approval. Provisional figures circulating are around 65 EU / 15 non-EU seats - unconfirmed until Padova publishes the official bando.
  • Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma - MedTech: New double-degree (Medicine + Biomedical Engineering) for 2026/2027. 68 EU/equivalent + 12 non-EU seats. Private university, separate entrance test in Rome in February - not the IMAT.
  • University of Cagliari - Medicine and Surgery (English): Not new this cycle (debuted 2024), but still one of the newer, less-discovered names on the roster. First medical degree programme in Sardinia.

A new programme isn't automatically your best option, and it isn't automatically your safest one either. It's just a genuinely new option - the same as any other, worth researching properly on its own terms before it goes on your list.