If you're writing the next NMCN professional exam, mark these dates down right now before you forget:
- Midwifery Exam: Tuesday, September 8 – Friday, September 11, 2026
- General and Post-Basic Nursing Exam: Tuesday, November 3 – Friday, November 6, 2026
That's it. That's the calendar. But if you stop reading here, you're going to make the same mistake most candidates make every single sitting — waiting until the exam is a month away before they start taking it seriously.
Why these dates matter more than you think
NMCN doesn't run one exam a year. They run four — March, May, September, and November. Which means the gap between "I just wrote an exam" and "I need to write another one" is short. If you sat for the March or May sitting and it didn't go your way, September or November is already knocking. There isn't much room to relax.
And if this is your first attempt, the worst thing you can do is treat four months (or even two, depending on which cycle you're in) like it's a long time. It isn't. Not for an exam that covers the full breadth of nursing or midwifery practice.
What's actually at stake
Look at the last few results NMCN released. Pass rates swing hard depending on the category. Some categories clear 80%+, others have struggled well below half. That's not because the exam suddenly got harder for some candidates and not others — it's because preparation levels are wildly uneven. The people who pass are, almost always, the people who put in structured, consistent work with past questions, not the people who crammed a textbook the week before.
That's the real lesson buried in every result release: the exam rewards familiarity. Not talent, not luck — familiarity. NMCN questions recycle themes and concepts across sittings. Drug calculations. Clinical scenarios. Community health topics candidates always underestimate until they show up on the paper. If you've worked through enough past questions, you walk in recognizing patterns instead of guessing.
What to do between now and your exam date
Whichever date applies to you — September if you're sitting Midwifery, November if you're General or Post-Basic Nursing — here's a straightforward plan:
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Confirm your registration status early. Don't wait until the last week to sort out your Examination Application Checklist or portal details. Institutions and candidates who scramble at the deadline are the ones who end up locked out or delayed.
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Start working on past questions now, not later. If you're only opening past questions two weeks before the exam, you're already behind. Give yourself real runway — enough time to go through material more than once, and enough time to actually notice which topics keep repeating. we have some free past questions for candidates here
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Don't skip the "boring" subjects. Community health, primary health care, disease surveillance — these get ignored because they feel less "clinical" than obstetric emergencies or drug calculations. They still show up, and they still cost people marks.
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Practice under time pressure. Knowing the material and being able to answer it fast enough on a CBT screen are two different skills. If you've never timed yourself, you're going to feel the pressure for the first time on exam day — which is the worst possible time to feel it.
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Check the official portal for updates as the date gets closer. NMCN sometimes adjusts logistics closer to the exam window. Keep an eye on app.nmcn.gov.ng and myportal.nmcn.gov.ng rather than relying on word of mouth.
The bottom line
September 8–11 and November 3–6 aren't far-off dates on a calendar anymore — they're the next checkpoint. Whichever one is yours, the candidates who walk out confident in a few months will be the ones who started today, not the ones who start when the date finally feels close enough to be scary.
If you need past questions or structured practice material to get ahead of either sitting, that's exactly what we built FreshNote's NMCN resources for — go check them out and give yourself the head start.