EPSO CAST Explained: The Open Call With No Deadline, and How to Be Ready for It

CAST is the permanent selection procedure for contract staff in the EU institutions, and it works unlike every EPSO competition. There is no deadline, no reserve list and no advertised number of places. As EPSO puts it, the procedure "is open at all times through a continuous registration system. There is no registration deadline."

Everything below comes from the official CAST procedure page and the consolidated call for expressions of interest, whose legally binding version dates from 12 April 2023 and has been amended by addenda up to 17 February 2026.

How does CAST actually work?

1. You register a profile in the database — at any time, with no deadline.
2. When a recruiting service has a need, it searches the database and shortlists candidates. Nobody sits a test just because they registered.
3. EPSO invites shortlisted candidates to the reasoning tests on one of the scheduled testing dates.
4. Candidates who pass become recruitable for that function group and every lower one.

The consequence is uncomfortable and worth stating plainly: your invitation is not on a calendar you control. It arrives when a service picks your profile, and then the tests are close. Preparation that starts on the day the invitation arrives usually starts too late.

What are the function groups?

• FG I — manual and administrative support. Compulsory education.
• FG II — clerical and secretarial. Post-secondary education, or secondary education giving access to post-secondary plus at least three years of appropriate experience.
• FG III — executive and technical. Same education rule as FG II.
• FG IV — administrative, advisory, linguistic and equivalent technical tasks. At least three years of completed university education.

Languages: C1 in one official EU language and B2 in a second. Open profiles range across administration and HR, finance, law, ICT and IT security, communication, project and programme management, building management, records management and archives, political affairs and EU policies, security, proofreading, translation and more.

What is the test?

Tests are taken in language 1. Invitations and results are provided in language 2, and the recruiting service may test language 2 and other languages at interview.

The two rules that decide your strategy

A pass is valid for ten years, counted from the publication of the result in your EPSO account, and it covers the same function group and every lower one, across all profiles. One good test result opens a decade of opportunities.

A fail costs you four months. If you do not pass, you cannot be re-invited for the same or a higher function group for four months. The waiting period expiring does not entitle you to a re-sit either — you need to be shortlisted again by a recruiting service, and that may take considerably longer than four months.

Put those two together and the conclusion is stark: the asymmetry between a pass and a fail is enormous, and it turns preparation before the invitation from a nice-to-have into the whole strategy.

When are the tests?

EPSO publishes testing dates in advance. The remaining published dates for 2026 are 6 October 2026, with results indicatively at the beginning of November, and 19 November 2026, with results indicatively at the end of December.

How PassEPSO prepares you for it

We are an independent preparation platform, not affiliated with EPSO or the EU institutions. CAST tests only the three reasoning types, which is exactly the part of our bank that is deepest:

• 1,759 active questions across the three tested sections — 322 verbal, 968 numerical, 469 abstract.
• A full simulation in the official shape: 40 questions in 65 minutes, timed section by section as EPSO specifies, regenerated from the bank each run, plus shorter section-only timed drills.
• All 24 official EU languages, with per-language coverage running from roughly 40% to 82% of the English bank. Note one gap in the official material: EPSO's own contract-staff abstract reasoning sample is published in English only.
• Difficulty recalibrated nightly from how candidates really answer each question, so practice tracks the level you are at rather than a fixed label.
• An AI tutor for the questions you get wrong, which matters more here than anywhere: with three tests and no field knowledge to fall back on, every point comes from technique.

What to do if you are registered and waiting

1. Keep your profile current and complete. You cannot be shortlisted for what your profile does not say.
2. Practise before you are invited, not after. The four-month penalty for failing makes an unprepared attempt genuinely expensive.
3. Do not neglect numerical because it is combined. Numerical and abstract share a single 10/20 threshold, so a weak side must be carried by the other.
4. Practise timed, always. Ten abstract questions in ten minutes is sixty seconds each, and untimed practice hides exactly that problem.

Practise the CAST reasoning tests free.

PassEPSO is an independent preparation platform. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to EPSO, EU Careers or any European Union institution. Official information about the CAST selection procedure is published only by EPSO on eu-careers.europa.eu and in the call for expressions of interest.