EPSO AST/158/26 supporting documents: 3 deadlines

Open competition EPSO/AST/158/26 opens 964 AST 3 places across three fields, and the notice gives candidates three separate deadlines, not one. The application form and the scanned identity document are due on 11 November 2026 at 12.00 (midday), Brussels time. Every other supporting document is due four months later, on 11 March 2027 at 12.00 (midday), Brussels time. Miss the first and you are not a candidate. Miss the third and you can still be excluded after passing every test.

Everything below is read off the notice of open competition published in the Official Journal: OJ C/2026/4963 of 6 October 2026, with its Annex I "General rules". Where a rule comes from EPSO's own candidate pages rather than from the notice, that is said on the spot.

What are the three deadlines, exactly?

What is due	When	Where the notice says so
Online application form, submitted	11 November 2026, 12.00 (midday) Brussels time	Section 4.3.1(b)
Scanned copy of your valid identity card or passport	11 November 2026, 12.00 (midday) Brussels time	Section 4.3.1(d)
All other supporting documents	11 March 2027, 12.00 (midday) Brussels time	Section 4.3.1(e)

The identity document is the one most candidates get wrong, because it travels with the application rather than with the diplomas. Point 4.3.1(d) is explicit: "By 11 November 2026 at 12.00 (midday), Brussels time, candidates must upload a scanned copy of their valid identity card or passport." Annex I, point 2.4(4) adds that the card or passport "must be valid on the closing date for the applications", and that "When requested, candidates will have to present an original of their identity card or a passport."

Point 4.3.1(e) then sets the second upload deadline: by 11 March 2027 at 12.00 (midday), Brussels time, "candidates must upload the scanned copies of all the other documents supporting the declarations made in their application form". Four months is a lot of time and it is exactly why this deadline is missed: nothing happens in between to remind you, and a registrar's office does not always answer in a week.

One more date matters for everything below: eligibility is measured on the application deadline, not on the document deadline. The notice opens Section 3 with the rule that candidates "must meet all the general and specific eligibility conditions (see Sections 3.1 to 3.3) on the closing date for applications". A diploma awarded in January 2027, or experience completed in February 2027, is evidence of nothing for this competition.

Which documents does the notice actually require?

Annex I, point 2.4 is the operative list. Read against Section 3.3.4(a) of the notice itself, it comes to six items.

1. Identity card or passport

A scanned copy of a valid document, by 11 November 2026 at midday. Not expired, and valid on that closing date.

2. The diploma or certificate that gives you access to the competition

Point 2.4(5)(a) asks for "a copy of their diploma(s) and/or certificate(s) attesting to educational qualifications giving access to the competition". If the parchment has not been issued to you yet, the notice settles the point in the same sentence: "In the absence of an official diploma, a statement of award or an equivalent document confirming the successful completion of the programme and the conferral of a title, degree, or diploma will be accepted as sufficient evidence". So a statement of award is enough; what has to exist by the closing date is the decision to award, not the printed certificate.

EPSO's own eligibility FAQ asks for one thing the notice does not spell out: upload the post secondary diploma "along with the list of courses you followed", and make sure "your name, stamps, signatures and serial numbers (if applicable) are visible". Your transcript belongs inside the file, not outside it.

3. A letter from the institution stating the standard duration of the programme, in years

This is the single most missed document in this competition, and it is mandatory for everyone who applies on a post secondary qualification. Section 3.3.4(a) of the notice: "To substantiate the duration of the programme, candidates must provide a letter, certificate, or equivalent document issued by the awarding educational institution." Annex I, point 2.4(5)(c) says the same thing with the requirement spelled out: "a letter, certificate, or equivalent evidence from the educational institution attesting to the standard duration of the completed study programme. This evidence must indicate the number of years required to complete the programme".

Eligibility here is counted in years: "post-secondary studies of at least two years" for the three year experience route, or secondary education giving access to post secondary education for the six year route. A diploma very often does not say how long the programme was. A file with the diploma in it and nothing attesting duration is the configuration most likely to fail the eligibility check, and the student office that issues the letter is not open on 11 March 2027 at 11.50.

4. For a non-EU diploma: a recognition document from a Member State authority

Two rules stack here. Annex I, point 2.2(1): "Degrees, diplomas and/or certificates, whether issued in Member States or non-EU countries, must be recognised by a competent authority of a Member State." And point 2.4(5)(b) requires you to upload, "in cases of diplomas/certificates issued in a non-EU country, a statement of equivalency issued by a competent authority of a Member State".

EPSO's FAQ on non-EU qualifications adds three specifics worth knowing before you order anything. A recognition document "must include at least the following information: Candidate's full name, Name of the university, Title of the diploma obtained". Diplomas from the United Kingdom "require a recognition document if issued after 1 January 2021". And the statement of equivalency downloadable from the NARIC Ireland database "is not valid for this purpose". National recognition bodies routinely take weeks, so this is the item to start in autumn 2026 rather than in February 2027.

5. Proof of every period of professional experience you declared

Annex I, point 2.4(6) requires that "All periods of professional activity must be covered by originals or certified copies of the following documents", and then lists them. For salaried work, point 2.4(6)(a): "employment contract(s) indicating the start and end dates of employment and/or first and last pay slips. These documents should indicate the nature, level, as well as a detailed description of duties performed, and they should bear an official header and stamp of the employer, and the name and signature of the person in charge."

Non-salaried or self-employed work, point 2.4(6)(b): "invoices or order forms detailing the work performed or any other relevant official supporting documents specifying the nature and period of the duties performed or services rendered".
Freelance translators, point 2.4(6)(c): documents attesting the time periods worked and the number of pages translated.
Freelance interpreters, point 2.4(6)(d): documents attesting the number of days worked, and the languages interpreted from and into.

Dates alone are not proof. EPSO's eligibility FAQ is blunt about the half-complete file: "Periods of professional experience that are not supported by a job description will not be considered by the Selection Board." The same page states the general rule for the whole upload: "Each entry in your CV (education, professional experience) must be supported by relevant documents; otherwise, it will not be considered."

6. Language evidence: usually nothing, and that surprises people

The competition asks for a thorough knowledge (C1) of one of the 24 official EU languages as language 1 and a satisfactory knowledge (B2) of a different one as language 2, declared in the application form. The notice sets no certificate requirement for them, and EPSO's eligibility FAQ says so directly: "In general, no supporting documents are required to prove language knowledge (please check the Notice of Competition for exceptions)." Do not spend March 2027 chasing a language certificate instead of the duration letter.

What does field 1, data processing, analytics and statistics, have to prove?

Field 1, which the notice calls Data processing, analytics and statistics, is the largest of the three, with 423 of the 964 places, and its eligibility section is the one with two separate lists to document. You may apply for one field only: Section 1(d) of the notice states that "This notice of competition covers three fields. A candidate may only apply for one of them."

There are two routes in Section 3.3.1(a), and your file has to evidence one of them end to end:

Route (i): "Have completed post-secondary studies of at least two years, attested by a diploma in one or more of the areas listed in point 3.3.1(b), and have at least three years of relevant professional experience (see point 3.3.1(c)) acquired after the date of the final decision to award that diploma."
Route (ii): secondary education attested by a diploma giving access to post secondary education, plus at least six years of relevant professional experience, again acquired after the award decision.

Route (i) has a second limb that rescues a lot of profiles. The requirement "is also deemed to be fulfilled where a candidate, after completing a bachelor’s programme in any field, has obtained a diploma in one or more of the areas listed in point 3.3.1(b) (such as a postgraduate certificate, graduate diploma, Master’s, PhD, or any other qualification requiring a prior bachelor’s degree for admission), irrespective of the duration of the studies leading to that diploma". A one year data science master's on top of a history degree qualifies, and the duration of that master's does not matter. Document both qualifications and both duration letters anyway: the award date of the qualifying diploma is what starts the clock on your three years of experience.

The diploma areas the notice accepts for field 1, from point 3.3.1(b): mathematics, statistics, actuarial science or data science; computer science and informatics, including AI; engineering, any field; economics, applied economics, business administration or finance; geography including geographical information systems, or geoinformatics; physics, chemistry or biology; social sciences, but only where "the studies included a specialisation in quantitative methods, survey methodology, computational social science, or data analysis"; and linguistics, but only with a specialisation in "corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, or text/data analysis".

Those last two are a documentation problem, not a reading problem. A sociology or linguistics diploma on its own does not show a specialisation. The transcript or course list that shows it is what makes the claim checkable, which is another reason to upload the list of courses with the diploma.

The experience side has its own list. Point 3.3.1(c) counts experience as relevant if it matches the Annex II duties for field 1 or one of thirteen named areas, among them programming and software development, analysis of large or unstructured data sets, data engineering, statistical and computational modelling, building and maintaining machine learning models, high performance computing, applied statistics or applied mathematics in a professional context, database management, data research and business intelligence, data governance, data validation and analysis, presenting analytical results to technical or non-technical audiences, dashboards and data visualisation, and the development of geospatial information systems tools. Your employer letter should describe the duties in those terms, because that is the vocabulary the Selection Board checks against.

Two general rules in Annex I decide how much of a messy career actually counts, and both are worth reading before you write a single job description. Point 2.3(1) requires experience to be genuine and effective work, remunerated, inside a professional relationship, and acquired after the qualifying diploma. Point 2.3(1)(e) then applies a sliding scale when only part of a job was relevant: "if more than 75 % of tasks are relevant, the whole period of professional experience will be considered relevant", between 50 % and 75 % counts at 75 %, 25 % to 50 % counts at half, and under 25 % does not count at all. Part time work is counted pro rata, and a doctorate counts for at most three years provided it was obtained.

What about fields 2 and 3?

The structure is identical: two years of post secondary study in a listed area plus three years of relevant experience, or secondary education plus six years. Only the lists change, and the relevance of experience is defined by Annex II duties alone rather than by a second list of areas.

Field	Places	Accepted diploma areas (point 3.3.2(b) and 3.3.3(b))
Field 2: Librarianship and information science	243	Librarianship; information science or studies; information management; documentation science; information systems and computer science; media studies; book and/or cultural heritage studies.
Field 3: Records and archives management	298	Archival sciences and/or records management; information or documentation science or management; digital humanities; history; cultural and/or digital heritage. Also business, administration or organisation studies, law, linguistics or literature, international relations and social sciences, but only where the studies included a specialisation in one of the areas above.

For both fields the relevance test is point 3.3.2(c) or 3.3.3(c): experience counts if it corresponds to the duties outlined in Annex II for that field. Field 2's Annex II duties run from acquisitions and cataloguing to running the library services platform, electronic resources and licensing, and controlled vocabularies. Field 3's run from records and archives policies and classification schemes to lifecycle management, digital preservation, access controls and responding to information requests. A file that proves "librarian, 2019 to 2026" without describing those duties proves the dates and nothing else.

Where do the files go, and in what format?

This is EPSO portal mechanics rather than notice text, and it is where a complete file still gets lost. From EPSO's instructions on uploading supporting documents: before the application deadline, documents go through My account and My CV, attached to the relevant CV records, and you must then submit the application, otherwise the uploaded documents are not linked to it. After the application deadline, documents "must be uploaded directly to the relevant application and not to your account’s CV section", and EPSO warns that "Any documents added to your CV after the application deadline will not automatically transfer to the submitted application and will not be visible to EPSO or the Selection Board."

That is the trap for the 11 March 2027 batch specifically: between November and March, the CV section is the wrong place. The route is My account, then My applications, then My submitted applications, then your application ID, then the paperclip icon on the Education and Training or Professional Experience entry the document belongs to. EPSO adds that "The Selection Board will only consider documents uploaded to the relevant section of the application", that files save automatically with no save button, and that documents "can be in any of the 24 official EU languages and may be uploaded in PNG, JPG, or PDF format. The maximum file size is 20MB per document."

What makes a supporting document non-compliant?

A diploma with nothing attesting its duration. Section 3.3.4(a) and point 2.4(5)(c) require the institution's letter stating the number of years. Without it, nothing in the file shows the two year minimum is met.
An employer document without a description of duties. Point 2.4(6)(a) wants nature, level and a detailed description of duties, on an official header, stamped and signed. EPSO's FAQ confirms that a period with no job description is not considered.
Experience that predates the qualifying diploma. Both routes in Section 3.3.1(a) count experience "acquired after the date of the final decision to award that diploma", and Annex I, point 2.3(1)(a) says the same.
A non-EU diploma with no Member State recognition document, or with the NARIC Ireland statement of equivalency, which EPSO says is not valid for this purpose.
A claim in the form with no document behind it. Annex I, point 6(1)(b) lists "making false declarations or declarations unsupported by the appropriate documents" among the grounds for disqualification at any stage.
A file uploaded to the CV section after 11 November 2026. It is invisible to the Selection Board, so it counts as not uploaded.
Anything uploaded after midday on 11 March 2027. EPSO's FAQ: once the deadline has passed, "candidates can no longer upload documents to their application", and "EPSO does not accept documents sent by email or via the contact form".

Is it true that most candidates will never have their documents examined?

Yes, and it is worth being honest about it, because it changes how much of your energy belongs in the file and how much belongs in one test.

Each test in this competition is a separate hurdle. Only the field-related MCQ test produces a ranking. Table 6 of the notice says the reasoning tests "will be scored to determine if the candidate obtained at least the required pass scores", while for the field-related MCQ test "The scores of candidates who obtained at least the required pass score will be used to create a ranking according to candidates’ performance". The EUFTE is scored pass or fail too.

Test	Language	Questions	Duration	Pass score	Role
Verbal reasoning	Language 1	20	35 minutes	10/20	pass or fail
Numerical reasoning	Language 1	10	20 minutes	combined 10/20	pass or fail
Abstract reasoning	Language 1	10	10 minutes	combined 10/20	pass or fail
Field-related MCQ test	Language 2	30	40 minutes	15/30	ranks you
EUFTE essay	Language 2	essay	40 minutes	5/10	pass or fail

Point 4.3.3(b)(iii): "Candidates who obtained at least the required pass score in the field-related MCQ test will be ranked in the descending order of their scores. This ranking will be used to determine the candidates who will have the EUFTE script scored and eligibility checked". And point 4.3.3(c)(i) caps that group: scoring of the EUFTE scripts and the eligibility check are carried out in parallel for a limited number of candidates taken in descending order of that ranking, and "This number will in principle not exceed 1,5 times the number of successful candidates sought", with the Selection Board free to increase it where candidates have equal scores.

So the eligibility check, which is the document check, is run for roughly 1,5 times the places of your field: in the order of 635 candidates in field 1, 365 in field 2 and 447 in field 3, as a simple multiplication of the places the notice publishes. For everyone below that line, point 4.3.3(c)(iii) is explicit: "Such candidates will not have their EUFTE scripts processed and will not have their eligibility checked." The reserve list itself is then drawn, per Section 4.3.4(a), from candidates who have all the pass scores, one of the highest field-related MCQ scores among that shortlist, and who "were found to be eligible".

Two conclusions follow, and they point in opposite directions. Your documents cannot buy you a place: 30 questions in 40 minutes on your own field decide your rank. But they can lose you one, and they lose it at the very last step, after four tests have gone well. That is the trade the three deadlines are really about.

What happens if a document is missing?

Annex I, point 2.4(2): "Failure to provide supporting document(s) by the date mentioned above may result in a candidate being considered ineligible or in their specific educational qualifications or experience not being taken into account." Note the second half. A missing duration letter does not always end the competition for you; it can instead delete the one qualification your eligibility rested on, which has the same effect.

EPSO can also ask for more: point 2.4(3) says that "At any phase of the procedure, candidates may be requested to provide additional information or documents", and EPSO's FAQ confirms the Selection Board may contact candidates through the portal to request missing documents, including identity documents. That is EPSO's choice, not a second deadline you can plan on. The related duty is in Annex I, point 1(3): candidates should check their candidate account at least every three calendar days, because that is where time sensitive requests appear.

If eligibility is refused, Annex I sets the remedies and they are short. A request for review of a Selection Board decision goes through the candidate account within 5 calendar days counting from the day after the decision is published there (point 7.2.2(6)(a)), with an administrative complaint under Article 90(2) of the Staff Regulations (point 7.3.1) for legal arguments.

What is not published yet?

Three things, and we would rather say so than fill them in.

Test dates. The notice publishes no timetable. It says the tests are held and proctored remotely and that EPSO will inform candidates of the modalities "at the latest when inviting them to the tests", and that the order of the tests may differ from the order they are listed in. EPSO's competition page says test dates, materials and results will be published there and in the candidate portal once confirmed.
What a "certified copy" means in an upload only process. Point 2.4(6) asks for originals or certified copies of the experience documents, while Section 4.3.1(e) asks you to upload scanned copies. No official source we can find resolves that, so if your employer can stamp and sign the document, that is the version to scan.
Documents in a non-EU language. EPSO says documents may be in any of the 24 official EU languages. Neither the notice nor EPSO's pages state what to do with a document in another language, or who would have to certify a translation, so we are not going to invent a rule for it. If that is your situation, ask EPSO through your candidate account, in writing, early.

How should you use the four months between the deadlines?

Order the slow items first and keep the fast ones for the end. The duration letter and the non-EU recognition document depend on other institutions and are the only two items you cannot produce yourself. Employer letters describing duties in the vocabulary of point 3.3.1(c) take one email each, and old employers answer former colleagues faster than they answer strangers in February. Then, when the file is complete in the application rather than in the CV section, spend the rest of the time on the one test that ranks you.

If you are preparing for this competition, our EPSO/AST/158/26 competition page sets out the notice test by test, what each pass mark decides, and timed practice for the field-related MCQ test, the reasoning tests and the EUFTE. It is published in all 24 official EU languages, so you can read it in your own language by adding ?lang= and your language code to the address.

Sources

Notice of open competition EPSO/AST/158/26: Official Journal C/2026/4963 of 6 October 2026. Sections 1(d), 3, 3.3.1 to 3.3.4, 4.2, 4.3.1(b), (d) and (e), 4.3.2, 4.3.3, 4.3.4, and Annex I, General rules, points 1(3), 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 6(1)(b) and 7.2.2(6)(a).
EPSO: How to upload supporting documents.
EPSO: What documents do I need to prove my eligibility?
EPSO: Can I upload my documents after the deadline?
EPSO: Do you accept my qualifications issued in non-EU countries?
EPSO: competition pages for field 1, field 2 and field 3, and the competition landing page. Checked 13 October 2026.

PassEPSO is an independent preparation platform. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to EPSO, EU Careers or any European Union institution, and using it is not a guarantee of a pass or a place on a reserve list. Official information about EPSO/AST/158/26 is published only by EPSO, in the notice of competition (OJ C/2026/4963) and on eu-careers.europa.eu.

EPSO AST/158/26 supporting documents: the three deadlines and the full checklist