Brazil's Enem 2026 Exam Begins with Over Five Million Participants

The 2026 National High School Exam (Enem) began on Sunday, November 8, for more than five million registered candidates across Brazil. A total of 5,051,345 people had confirmed registrations and were eligible to take the test, which serves as one of the main gateways to higher education in the country.

The first day included 90 objective questions divided between languages, codes and their technologies, and human sciences and their technologies, plus a dissertative-argumentative essay. Exam venues opened at noon and closed at 1 p.m. Brasilia time, while the tests ran from 1:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. The unified national schedule applied everywhere regardless of local time zones.

“We are waging a war against setbacks. We are waging a war for education. A war that means peace.”

Women made up the clear majority of participants, with 3,232,013 female candidates representing 63.98 percent of the total, compared with 1,819,332 male candidates at 36.02 percent. The education research institute Inep also reported that 13,821 participants were over 60 years old, 1,292,082 were 17 years old, and 2,364,868 were final-year high school students.

Of the candidates, 1,963,906 came from the public school system, while 3,432,111 received a fee waiver and 1,619,234 paid the registration fee. Additionally, 2,078,015 candidates identified themselves as mixed race.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited the exam monitoring room at Inep headquarters in Brasilia and called the event a peaceful war for education and peace. He was accompanied by Education Minister Leonardo Barchini and Inep President Manuel Palacios.

The essay topic chosen for this year was "The appreciation of the Unified Health System (SUS) as a universal right," inviting students to reflect on public health as a constitutional right and the challenges of equal access to medical care across Brazil.