Applying for Clinical Radiology ST1: the 2027 entry guide

Submit your Clinical Radiology ST1 application through Oriel by 19 November 2026 at 16:00 UK time. Before submitting, check your eligibility and the achievements you are declaring: radiology counts work completed at your actual submission date. The later evidence upload is not extra time to finish it.

This guide covers the 2027 recruitment round, checked on 7 November 2026. NHS England runs a central application process covering all four UK nations, working with the Royal College of Radiologists. Read the current person specification and portfolio descriptors alongside this guide.

Put the dates in your diary

The radiology recruitment timetable gives these dates:

• Applications opened: 22 October 2026, 10:00.
• Applications close: 19 November 2026, 16:00.
• MSRA: 5–20 January 2027.
• Portfolio upload: Exact dates to be confirmed; listed under February.
• Interviews: 11–17 March 2027, excluding weekends.
• Initial offers: By 6 April 2027.
• Hold deadline: 9 April 2027, 09:00.
• Upgrade deadline: 14 April 2027, 16:00.

All times are UK local time. The timetable says initial offers by 17:00, while the offers page says 16:00 on the same day. The day agrees; the hour does not. Watch Oriel for the actual offer and response deadline.

You can keep the milestones together in DocFolio's application timeline. Check Oriel messages regularly after applying, particularly when booking and upload instructions arrive. Put the dates beside your rota, before a night shift quietly occupies your revision plan.

Check eligibility before working on your score

The 2027 person specification requires a recognised medical qualification, full GMC registration when you apply and a licence to practise when the post starts. It also sets requirements for foundation competences, employment history, fitness-to-practise declarations and eligibility to work in the UK.

Check the radiology experience limit carefully. You must have no more than 18 months of whole-time-equivalent radiology experience by the advertised post start date. Experience outside the UK counts. The specification excludes foundation modules but limits the amount that can be treated as foundation-level experience to four months; the application guidance gives further detail for applicants outside UKFPO-approved training.

Count the experience you will have by the start date, including a current fellowship. If the calculation is unclear, resolve it before submitting. A stronger portfolio cannot compensate for exceeding an eligibility limit. Doctors with substantial prior radiology training can investigate the separate ST3 entry route, which has its own capability requirements.

For foundation competence, identify the route that applies to you. Current UK Foundation doctors, recent FPCC holders, doctors in approved specialty training and applicants using CREST do not all submit the same documents. The relevant competence period is the three and a half years before the advertised start date. Use the national foundation competence guidance, including its requirements for the accepted 2024 and 2027 CREST versions.

Prioritisation also applies to interview invitations and offers in this round. Check your circumstances against the published 2027 rules, rather than assuming that NHS employment alone establishes priority status. For national Round 1, the first deadline to request a review of an incorrect status is 24 November 2026 at 17:00.

Complete the Oriel form and freeze your evidence

In the portfolio section, enter the category, exact evidence title and achievement date for each domain. Keep a copy of what you submit. You will need to match the later documents to these declarations.

The portfolio review guidance requires completed achievements at submission. A qualification needs an awarded outcome, a paper must have been accepted, and a presentation must already have been delivered. Submission of a paper to a journal is insufficient.

If you apply before 19 November, your earlier submission fixes what you can claim. Do not assume that work finished before the advertised closing date can be added afterwards. Categories and declared achievements cannot be changed after submission; different evidence or vague evidence titles can result in zero for the domain.

Read every declaration once more before submitting. Check dates against your employment history, make sure required eligibility documents are attached and confirm that the form has actually been submitted. Arrange a separate session for this final check so that editing your portfolio answers does not crowd out the administrative sections. Ideally, use a computer that isn't also waiting to print a discharge summary.

The application page explains that eligibility checks can continue after MSRA results and up to the offer stage. An invitation to the next stage does not confirm that every eligibility check has passed.

Understand the five portfolio domains

The framework has five domains. Categories A–E score 4–0, with commitment to specialty double-weighted. Use the full 2027 descriptors and evidence requirements to choose your categories; the following points address common mistakes.

Commitment to specialty

Significant departmental exposure means at least three whole-day equivalents. For the highest category, exposures must be meaningfully different. Category C now requires presenting at a radiology course or conference; attending a course alone does not meet that descriptor.

When organising a future taster, ask to see a range of work and keep a record of what you observed. At the end, request a letter that clearly identifies the placement and dates. This gives you material for a career decision as well as evidence for recruitment. The taster is also your chance to ask what happens between the interesting cases.

Leadership and management

The role must have lasted at least six months. Read the distinction between national and local roles and between radiology, other healthcare and activity outside healthcare.

Record what you were responsible for and what you actually did. A title on its own may leave the assessor unable to understand your contribution. Ask the relevant organisation for evidence while the people supervising the role are still available. The minutes may be dull; finding them after rotating away is duller.

Teaching and training

Match your activity to the precise descriptor, including its qualification, duration and geographical requirements. The published table and explanatory text are not fully aligned about single-session teaching, so do not rely on a simplified claim that any teaching session earns a particular category.

Retain evidence of your role and feedback. If you are planning future teaching, choose a topic learners need, agree how to evaluate it and document any changes you make after feedback. Buying a course should not be your first response to an uncertain score. Keep the feedback somewhere more permanent than the ward computer's Downloads folder.

Audit and quality improvement

The current descriptors recognise work that changed practice or showed that practice already met the required standard. They also explicitly allow an audit and re-audit to count as two audits. Check both cycles against the top descriptor before starting a separate project solely for points.

Explain your contribution accurately. Ask your supervisor to document your role, completion dates and findings, and keep the project summary or presentation. A project labelled “radiology” still needs to meet the guidance's definition of imaging forming its primary part. Give the spreadsheet a proper filename before it acquires another ‘final’.

Academic achievements

Authorship, the type of output and its relevance determine the category. An additional undergraduate or intercalated degree does not itself score. Accepted papers and delivered presentations need the appropriate evidence; do not treat a planned talk as an achievement already gained.

For work involving several contributors, check how the guidance treats first, joint-first and consortium authorship. Describe your contribution as it appears in the publication or supporting documents. Keep acceptance correspondence and the final citation together so you can establish the output's status at submission. An acceptance email deserves better than burial beneath mandatory-training reminders.

Prepare the upload before the portal opens

Only applicants invited to interview or placed on the shortlist reserve are invited to upload portfolio evidence. An upload invitation does not itself guarantee an interview. Selecting category E in all five domains means you will not be invited to sit the MSRA, according to the portfolio guidance.

Prepare one PDF per domain, following the limits on the achievements and supporting documents allowed. Check that each file opens, is legible and matches the title entered in Oriel. Complete the final submission step in Qpercom; uploading files alone does not make them available to assessors. The current timetable has not confirmed the upload window, so prepare the files now and follow the invitation deadline when it arrives.

DocFolio's portfolio self-assessment can help you review your categories and identify gaps. Keep the official descriptors beside you when making the final selections. Even a PDF called ‘final_final’ deserves opening once.

Prepare for the January MSRA

Radiology requires the January sitting and does not accept scores from previous sittings. The application guidance publishes a minimum cutoff of 201 in each component. That is not a guaranteed interview score: interview capacity and the prioritisation rules also affect selection.

The MSRA structure is a 95-minute Professional Dilemmas paper followed by a 75-minute Clinical Problem Solving paper, with an optional five-minute break. Use the official practice material to understand the format before deciding what further preparation you need.

A practical approach is to try timed questions, identify weaker areas and plan manageable sessions around your rota. Review why you chose an answer, rather than judging a session only by the number of questions completed. There is no official preparation period that guarantees success. A post-nights revision timetable should allow for the possibility that you are asleep.

When invited, follow the booking instructions. Confirm the appointment, check your identification and allow for travel. Some adjustments require Pearson to book on your behalf; follow the arrangements agreed for you.

Practise for the interview

The 2027 interview guidance specifies two online Qpercom Recruit stations, each lasting up to 15 minutes. Station A includes portfolio questions and two further scored sections; Station B has three sections based on the person specification. Older descriptions of exact question topics should not be treated as this year's station script.

Prepare to explain your achievements, what you learnt from departmental exposure and why radiology suits you. Use the person specification to identify examples of communication, teamwork, prioritisation and managing uncertainty. Practise explaining your reasoning aloud, with someone who can challenge a vague answer or ask what you personally contributed.

Understand the training you are applying for. Clinical radiology is a run-through programme with an indicative five-year training period. Interventional radiology takes an indicative six years. If you want the IR pathway from ST1, state that preference in your application; later entry is subject to selection and available capacity, as the application guidance explains.

Test your camera, microphone and connection in the room you will use. Read the applicant declaration and prepare the requested identification. Practise under the published station timing so you can give a focused answer and still respond to follow-up questions. Check that your camera frames you without requiring a stack of revision books to stay upright.

Ranking, offers and your next decision

For 2027, final ranking uses 70% interview and 30% portfolio. MSRA is not part of that final weighted score. Appointability is assessed from the interview, with overall, station and question-level requirements; a portfolio score cannot make up for failing those requirements.

The 2026 competition table recorded 2,849 radiology applications for 327 posts, a ratio of 8.71. This describes the previous round, not your personal chance of receiving a 2027 offer.

Research programmes before preferencing opens: consider the hospitals you might rotate through, travel and the practicalities of living there. Try the commute at shift-change time; a map has never had to find staff parking. Rank only posts you would take. If you enable upgrades, make sure every higher preference is genuinely preferable, because an upgrade replaces your existing offer. Read the national offer rules and respond by the deadline shown in Oriel.