TOPIK IBT Registration 2026: Dates, Fees and Documents

TOPIK IBT registration 2026 — the next sitting, first

Everything else on this page matters less than these three dates. Check them against your own registrar before you plan anything around them.

Korea runs six paper sittings and six IBT sittings in 2026, so missing one window is not fatal. Outside Korea there are usually fewer sittings and the windows are shorter, which is exactly why the TOPIK IBT schedule you need is the local one, not the Korean one.

Who actually registers you

There is no single global "TOPIK sign-up" page. Registration is handled by whoever administers the exam in the country where you sit it.

Inside Korea, you register yourself on topik.go.kr, the NIIED site. Account, application, test centre and payment all happen there.

Outside Korea, you register through the local administering institution — not through topik.go.kr. Some examples:

• Vietnam — IIG Vietnam, the official NIIED representative


• Mainland China — topik.neea.cn


• Uzbekistan — the Korean Education Centre in Tashkent


• Indonesia — JIKS


• Japan — the Korea Education Foundation, kref.or.jp

If your country is not listed above, the announcement page of the Korean Education Centre or the Korean embassy in your country is where the local registrar is named. Treat any other "TOPIK registration service" as unofficial until you have found it named there.

Documents and money

More applications fail here than anywhere else.

Your photo. A recent colour photo, plain background, face fully visible, no hat and no filter. Every registrar enforces its own pixel dimensions and file-size limit automatically, and a photo outside them is simply rejected.

Your ID. Register with the document you will actually carry on exam day — your passport, or in Korea your alien registration card. Name spelling, date of birth and document number on the application must match it exactly. Have a clear scan or photo of the ID page saved before you open the form; sessions time out.

The fee. These are the 2026 fees for sitting in Korea:

Exam	Format	Fee
TOPIK I	Paper (PBT)	40,000 KRW
TOPIK II	Paper (PBT)	55,000 KRW
TOPIK I	IBT	70,000 KRW
TOPIK II	IBT	95,000 KRW

Outside Korea the fee is set and collected locally, in local currency. Payment can mean an online card payment, a bank transfer, or a visit to an office in person, depending on the country.

The payment deadline. This is the detail people lose their seat over: submitting the form is not registering. The application only counts once the fee has been paid. In Korea, payment must be completed by 24:00 on the day after you apply, and credit-card payment closes at 18:00 on the final day of the application window. Wherever you are, pay on the same day you apply.

The trap: the Korean schedule is not your schedule

The single most common mistake among international candidates is finding topik.go.kr, reading the Korean calendar, and planning around dates that do not apply to them. An overseas sitting typically has a different exam date, a registration window that opens and closes earlier, a different fee, and far fewer seats.

Two more, in the order they tend to bite:

• Seats run out before the published deadline. Several countries cap the number of applicants and close registration automatically once that cap is reached. Uzbekistan works this way — registration stops at the maximum number of applicants, and candidates then have to go to the Korean Education Centre in Tashkent in person to pay and collect an exam number. Assume your market has a rule like this until you have checked, and register on the first day of the window rather than the last.


• IBT and PBT are separate applications. Separate schedules, separate seat pools. Applying for one does not put you on a list for the other.

Worth knowing before you agonise over the choice: IBT and PBT produce the same certificate, with the same grade system, and it is valid for two years. IBT's real advantage is speed — results exactly 20 days after the exam, against one to two months for paper.

After you register

• You get a confirmation, and then an admission ticket with your test centre, seat and reporting time. Download and print it as soon as it is released; do not plan to find it on your phone on exam morning.


• Check the name on the ticket against your ID one more time. Corrections are straightforward during the application window and awkward or impossible afterwards.


• Results appear online 20 days after an IBT sitting, on the registrar's site — topik.go.kr for candidates in Korea.

Between those two points you usually have several weeks. That is your actual preparation time.

While you wait for your seat

IBT is not the paper test on a screen. The audio plays once and cannot be rewound, writing is typed into an on-screen box, and the timer runs in front of you the whole time. Exam morning is the wrong moment to meet that interface for the first time.

Our free IBT demo takes a few minutes, with no account and no signup: 9 questions — 3 listening, 5 reading, 1 writing — in the same interface as the real exam. Writing is not auto-scored in the demo; it is there so you can feel what typing Korean against a clock is actually like.

Try the free IBT demo

Last updated

Last updated: 5 September 2026. Exam dates, registration windows and fees change every sitting, and the fee table above is for sittings in Korea in 2026. Verify each date against your own registrar before you apply.

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New to the IBT format? The TOPIK IBT overview explains the exam, the question types and how the mock exams work.