18 UK foundation schools compared

A foundation school brings together the medical schools, hospital and mental health trusts, GP practices and other organisations in one area to train foundation doctors across different settings, following UKFPO's national guidance with some local differences. This map shows you every foundation school, shaded by UKFPO's first-choice ratio for the last three cycles or by average rent. Press a school for its programmes, groups, trusts, sites, specialties, rents and pint prices.

Applicants who put the school first for every place, UKFP 2026: fewer more.

Press a school on the map, or pick one from the list, and its figures open here.

Programmes, groups, trusts, sites and specialties are counted from each foundation school's latest published list, 10,655 programmes in all: the 2026 cycle lists on Oriel, except East of England, KSS, LNR, London, Northern Ireland, Oxford (Thames Valley), Severn, Trent, Wales, Wessex, West Midlands Central, West Midlands North, West Midlands South and Yorkshire and Humber, counted from the 2027 to 2029 lists those schools have published; the ratios are UKFPO's, the rents the ONS's for the region a school sits in, the pint prices Finder's, each named beside its figure, and every source is listed below. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. These are rough figures, not the schools' or UKFPO's, and lists change after publication: do your own checks against Oriel and the foundation school before you preference a programme. Doctor Devify Ltd accepts no responsibility for a decision made on these figures.

Sources

  • First-choice ratios: UKFPO, UK Foundation Programme 2027, First preference ratios (2024 to 2026 cycles), read 10 September 2026. Primary allocation, with the figure after the pre-allocation scheme beside it.
  • The group stage: UKFPO's UKFP 2026 application timeline, NHS England's placeholder FAQs of March 2026 for the kinds of group in England, and NIMDTA's foundation recruitment page for Northern Ireland, all read 10 September 2026.
  • Rents: ONS Price Index of Private Rents, 19 August 2026 edition, each region's latest month (Northern Ireland runs two months behind), for the ONS region a school sits in. The placing of schools in regions is ours, not the school's own figure.
  • Pint prices: Finder UK's 2026 list, its average of user-reported prices on Numbeo and Expatistan as of April 2026. It is not a survey or a statistic, and each city is placed in a school by us.
  • Local policies on pre-allocation and linked applications, linked medical schools and the places each school covers: UKFPO's page for that school, read 14 September 2026, the policies in our words.