Medicine and Surgery (LM-41, English-taught)

About the course

A six-year single-cycle degree in Medicine and Surgery (class LM-41) taught in English at the University of Florence, with restricted (numerus clausus) entry through the IMAT. It is run by the Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, with its own programme website at medicineandsurgery.unifi.it.

Entry requirements for Irish students

• The university assesses the Irish Leaving Certificate individually and does not publish a fixed Irish requirement. Contact admissions to confirm. You need a secondary school diploma or equivalent foreign qualification, and must submit documents on your foreign qualification by the deadline set in the call.
• Admission is by the IMAT only: 60 multiple-choice questions in 100 minutes, in English (4 reading skills, 5 logical reasoning, 23 biology, 15 chemistry, 13 physics and maths). Scoring is +1.5 for a correct answer, -0.4 for a wrong one and 0 for a blank; the minimum score to be ranked is 20 out of 90. There is no interview.
• No separate English test is required for entry, but holding a recognised English-language certificate is used as a tie-breaker. Students whose first language is not Italian must show Italian at CEFR level B2 by the start of third year.

Working in Ireland afterwards

Because your medical degree comes from an EU/EEA country, the Medical Council of Ireland can recognise it automatically under EU Directive 2005/36/EC, as long as it is listed in Annex V (point 5.1.1). If that listing says the degree must come with an internship or state-exam certificate from your home country, you need to have that too, and you must also show your current professional standing and meet the English-language requirements. Graduates of EU/EEA medical schools may apply to the HSE for Irish intern posts, but only if their home-country degree does not already count as complete training. In older HSE intern guides (e.g., the 2022 guide), only graduates from medical schools in Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Iceland and Slovenia could apply. Graduates from other EEA countries (and Italians holding the ‘abilitante’ degree) were told they are not eligible, because they qualify directly for General registration. Applicants who need no work permit were matched before those who do. Please check the current eligibility list in the HSE intern guide for the year you apply. We could not confirm it for the July 2027 intake because the current HSE guide pages are password-protected.

How to apply

1. Prepare for the IMATStudy biology, chemistry, physics, maths, logic and reading comprehension for the IMAT. Start learning Italian early, as you will need B2 by the start of third year.
2. Register on UniversitalySign up and apply for the IMAT on universitaly.it, choosing Florence (2026 window: 26 August to 9 September, 3pm Italian time). Pay the test fee as instructed there.
3. Sit the IMATTake the test in late September (29 September 2026 at the Fortezza da Basso in the last cycle). Check your score (8 October 2026) and the national ranking (26 October 2026) on Universitaly.
4. Enrol quicklyIf you are offered a place, enrol with the University of Florence within 4 days of the ranking being published and submit your Leaving Certificate documentation by the deadline in the call.

Costs

• Fees at Florence depend on family income (ISEE). Students living abroad are given a notional ISEE based on their country’s World Bank income group; for high-income countries such as Ireland this is 75,500 euro for 2026/27. The university’s fee table for that band (2025/26 edition, the latest referenced online) gave an annual contribution of about 2,285 euro; with the 140 euro regional tax and 16 euro stamp duty (both confirmed), the total is roughly 2,441 euro a year. We could not re-open the fee table itself, so confirm the exact contribution with the university’s fee simulator. The IMAT registration fee is paid through Universitaly and its amount is not stated in the university’s call.

At a glance