Where to Get Leaving Cert Past Papers for Free

Every Leaving Cert exam paper and every marking scheme is published free by the State Examinations Commission, the body that sets and marks the state exams. Nothing you need to sit a past paper is behind a paywall. This post lists the places you can get papers, what each one gives you, and what each one costs.

examinations.ie is the official source

The SEC publishes its back catalogue in the Exam Material Archive. You tick a box to accept the terms of use, then work through four dropdowns.

1. Choose Type. Exam Papers, Marking Schemes, Deferred Exam Papers or Deferred Exam Marking Schemes.
2. Choose Year.
3. Choose Examination. Leaving Certificate, Leaving Certificate Applied or Junior Certificate / Cycle.
4. Choose Subject.

The result is a list of PDF links for that combination, one per paper, at each level the subject is examined at.

The exam paper years run from 1995 to 2026. Marking schemes start later, at 2001. The most recent marking scheme year in the archive on Friday 7 August 2026 was 2025, so the schemes for this June's papers had not appeared yet.

A few things the archive itself flags on that page.

• The papers from 2021 onwards were adjusted to compensate for disruption to learning during Covid, and the SEC says they do not necessarily follow the same structure as papers from other years.
• Where a syllabus has changed, the papers from before the change stay online for reference and are not based on the current course. The SEC keeps a list of syllabus changes.
• Modified papers, adapted for candidates with vision impairments, are available from 2022.
• Some papers are never published, including the bereavement papers from 2019, along with the Junior Cycle, Leaving Cert Applied and some Leaving Cert papers of 2020, the deferred Leaving Cert papers since 2022, and subjects with very few candidates.

What the archive does not do

The archive gives you one PDF per paper, one lookup at a time. There are no pages to browse and no addresses to bookmark, so a second paper means a second pass through the dropdowns.

The filenames are SEC codes. The 2025 Higher Level maths marking scheme is LC003ALP000EV.pdf, and you cannot work that out from the subject and the year.

There is also no topic organisation. If you want every calculus question from the last ten years, the archive gives you ten separate papers and leaves the sorting to you.

Your school and your library

Ask your teacher first. Your school may already have the papers and the marking schemes for your subject on a shared drive, which saves you the lookup entirely. A teacher can also tell you which years still match the current course.

Public library membership in Ireland is free to join with photo ID and proof of address. A library card also gets you the eLibrary, the free online service with ebooks, magazines and courses. Printing and study space vary by branch, so check with your local one before you plan around it.

Exam papers books in shops

The printed exam paper books from publishers like Edco and Folens collect the same SEC papers for one subject in a single booklet, with extra material the publisher wrote around them. The Leaving Cert Spanish book from Edco costs €7.50 on schoolbooks.ie, and prices across the Edco Leaving Cert range vary by subject.

That money buys the printing, the binding and the publisher's own material. It does not buy access to the papers, because those are free either way. A booklet you can write on and carry around is worth something if the alternative is printing a stack of PDFs at home. If you have a printer, or you are happy working on screen, you already have everything the papers themselves contain.

Other free sites

Several Irish study sites republish the SEC PDFs at no charge under their own search. Some of them put past questions sorted by topic behind a paid plan. Check what is free and what is paid before you make an account, because the papers underneath are the same public documents in every case.

The ExamAI finder and topic packs are free

Our past paper finder resolves a plain-language search to a paper. Type maths 2025 hl lc or biology 2019 ms and it returns the paper or the marking scheme. It goes back to 2007 for both the Leaving Cert and the Junior Cert, hosts no PDFs itself, and links every result to the file on examinations.ie.

Each subject also has a page you can bookmark, such as Leaving Cert maths papers, with a page per year under it.

For the topic problem, we grouped the questions in our corpus, which goes back to 2015, into exam topics. The Leaving Cert biology topic pages show the past questions on one topic across all those years. Each topic has a PDF pack you can download at Higher or Ordinary Level, with or without the marking schemes. The packs are free and need no account. Once you have one, the past paper study method is the same as for a full paper, closed book and marked afterwards.

FAQ

Are Leaving Cert past papers free? Yes. The SEC publishes every paper and every marking scheme in the Exam Material Archive at no cost.

How far back do the papers go? Exam papers go back to 1995 and marking schemes to 2001 in the SEC archive. The ExamAI finder goes back to 2007.

Are the 2026 papers out? Yes, 2026 is in the exam paper years on the SEC archive. The marking scheme years stopped at 2025 when we checked on Friday 7 August 2026.

Where do I find the marking schemes? Choose Marking Schemes at the first dropdown of the SEC archive, or add ms to a search in the finder, as in biology 2019 ms.

Do I need to buy the exam papers book? No. The book is a printed copy of free PDFs with solutions and notes added, so the decision is about whether you want it on paper.

Why does my subject have fewer years than another? Syllabus changes and non-publication both cut into the run. The SEC lists the syllabus changes, and papers from before a change are kept for reference only.

Open the past paper finder to get any paper and its marking scheme together, or start from a subject's topic pages if you want the questions grouped.